More on More

This is Hannah More as depicted in the film "Amazing Grace", made in 2007 - exactly 200 years after the Slave Trade Act was passed "stopping directly the carrying of men in British ships to be sold as slaves."*

So she lived a while ago. And was no spring chicken when she got involved in all things anti-slavery.

Before then, throughout her 30s, she lived in London and spent most of her time going to the theatre and writing plays. All was going swimmingly until a couple of her plays bombed. And with them her popularity. And by the sound of it, she got fed up. So upped sticks and moved back to Fishponds, near Bristol, and had a few years Sabbatical. Or an extended writing retreat. Or a mid-life crisis, call it what you will.

Interesting that out of this hidden time in her early 40s came much of the oomph for the rest of her life's work... galavanting round the country campaigning, writing various pamphlets, poems and essays, setting up schools in neglected, forgotten areas, mentoring young people and then in her dotage chucking money at various causes in heady bursts of philanthropy.

So yeah, she must have been a riot. Especially as a single woman of a certain age. At a time when social conventions were pretty much set.

Tis good to have an example like her's, even if it's from a by-gone age. I admire her appetite for life and the freedom she so evidently lived it with. It inspires and gives me courage to live life well. And to revel in whatever it holds in all its seasons.

*(Riding, Alan (14 February 2007), "Abolition of slavery is still an unfinished story", International Herald Tribune, retrieved 16 April 2008).