A special launch event was held on Saturday 17 January at Barley Wood in Wrington in collaboration with the YMCA and The Hannah More Trust, with MP for North Somerset Sadiq Al-Hassan in attendance.
The letters, which are currently held at the University of Duke Library in North Carolina, USA, detail her involvement in the campaign to abolish the trafficking of enslaved Africans , her establishment of some of the first schools for working class people, and how she amassed a fortune as a result of her best-selling works.
Project Research Fellow, Dr Ben Wilkinson-Turnbull, in the Department of English at the University of Bristol, said: “More’s letters are an invaluable source for understanding women’s involvement in social reform and politics. Written at a time women could not the vote, let alone sit in parliament, More’s letters demonstrate how women were able to use their pens to sway opinion—enabling them to play a central role in social debates of the period. They are also vital to understanding Bristol and Somerset’s rich social history, and the central role people from this area played in shaping Britain’s history’.
The letters are now freely accessible on the new Hannah More Letters website.
Born in Fishponds in 1745, Hannah More was an abolitionist, religious writer and educator of the poor, setting up clubs for women and schools for children. She wrote pro-abolition poems and wrote successful plays which were performed in Bristol and Bath. She lived near Wrington and later on Windsor Terrace in Clifton.
William Wilberforce was a British politician and a leader of the movement to abolish the trafficking of enslaved Africans, heading the campaign that led to the passing of the Slave Trade Act in 1807.
The next stage of the project, co-funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), and the YMCA – which owns Hannah More’s former house in Wrington, will see Ben Wilkinson-Turnbull and colleagues set up an archive of the manuscript material that he has uncovered in the basement of the property.
Dr Wilkinson-Turnbull added: “Finding these materials, many of which have not been seen in decades, is incredibly exciting.”
The project will lead to engagement work with the local community such as archive open days, an exhibition and developing a heritage garden trail.
Dr Wilkinson-Turnbull added: “In addition to being owned by More, the property was later owned and expanded by the Wills family, tobacco merchants who are often seen as the ‘founding family’ of the University of Bristol. Many of the materials in the archive relate to their ownership of the house, and my project will use these materials to explore the property and, more widely, the university’s relationship with the legacy of empire.”