Hannah More Meets Simple Simon: Tracts, Chapbooks, and Popular Culture in Late Eighteenth-Century England

Abstract

During the winter of scarcity of 1794, Hannah More wrote “a few moral stories,” drew up a plan for publication and distribution, and sent the package around to her evangelical and bluestocking friends. Their response was enthusiastic; even Horace Walpole abandoned his usual teasing to write back, “I will never more complain of your silence; for I am perfectly convinced that you have no idle, no unemployed moments. Your indefatigable benevolence is incessantly occupied in good works; and your head and your heart make the utmost use of the excellent qualities of both…. Thank you a thousand times for your most ingenious plan; may great success reward you!” Walpole then sent off copies of the plan to the duchess of Gloucester and other aristocratic friends. Following Wilberforce's example, such wealthy philanthropists subscribed over 1,000 pounds to support the project during its first year. Henry Thornton agreed to act as treasurer and Zachary Macaulay as agent, and the ball was rolling.In March 1795, the Cheap Repository of Moral and Religious Tracts issued its first publications. Prominent evangelicals and gentry worked to distribute them to the rural poor, booksellers, and hawkers and among Sunday schools and charity children. During the Repository's three-year existence, the fifty or so tracts written by Hannah More were supplemented by contributions from fellow evangelicals Thornton, Macaulay, John Venn, and John Newton, the poet William Mason, More's literary friend Mrs. Chapone, her protégée Selina Mills, and her sisters Sally and Patty More and by reprints of old favorites by Isaac Watts and Justice John Fielding.