impact of advancing age on the quality and content of More's
last works.

My literary biography does not tell Hannah More's entire
story. I do not stray much beyond More's career as a writer. I
indulge in pure biography only when More's mastery of resis-
tance masked by accommodation was in danger of being
discovered by contemporaries during the bitter Blagdon Con-
troversy. I present her life largely as revealed by her publica-
tions and place the patterns and themes of her oeuvres in their
appropriate historical and biographical context. Thus I have
added a strong dose of social/cultural history to this biography
in the attempt to delineate the hopes and fears of the complex
dynamo that was Hannah More. Yet despite the periodic and
necessary detours into historical background and synthesis, the
focus is clearly on Miss More. This spotlight is not intended to
present her as the definitive female writer or politician, but
rather is intended to help historians and critics appreciate the
life in the works of Hannah More.

-xiv-