SOURCE: Kelly, Gary. “Revolution, Reaction, and the Expropriation of Popular Culture: Hannah More's Cheap Repository.” Man and Nature 6 (1987): 147-55.

In the following essay, Kelly describes More's use of the conventions associated with popular chapbooks to forward her Evangelical agenda, including the notion that poverty was caused by the laziness and bad judgment of the poor.

In March 1790 Hannah More, author, retired schoolmistress, Evangelical, and leader of the Sunday school movement, wrote to her sister:

Things are getting worse and worse in France. A lady of quality the other day in Paris, rung her bell, and desired the footman to send up her maid Jeannotte. In vain she rung and rung; the man told her, Jeannotte refused to come; or be any longer under any body. At last Jeannotte walked into the room with a pamphlet open in her hand, and sat down. The lady astonished, asked her what...