The Literary Manuscripts and Letters of Hannah More by Nicholas D. Smith

Abstract

MLR, 105.3, 2,010 845 risks sounding over-insistent. Equally, while the nature of the project requires that it respond to previous critics of Richardson, at times thewriting becomes bogged down in refuting dated views. This makes the study useful as a retrospective on twentieth-century Richardson criticism, but further limits the appeal of an already narrowly focused piece. That said, anyone who is seriously interested in Clarissa ought to read this thoughtful book. University of Leeds Bonnie Latimer The LiteraryManuscripts and Letters ofHannah More. By Nicholas D. Smith. Farnham: Ashgate. 2008. xxvi+245 pp. ?55. ISBN 978-0-7546-6270-9. Nicholas D. Smith's scholarly survey,which purports 'to collect and describe Han nah More's surviving papers (literary and epistolary)' (p. xxiii) and 'to furnish materials for scholarly and critical editions of her poems and letters' (p. xxiii), is an invaluable contribution to our understanding of thematerial facts of literary production and thebook market in thefinal decades of the long eighteenth century. At the same time, by shedding light on the impressive network of private com mentaries and social relationships which helped define the cultural and emotional universe against which Hannah More (1745-1833) shaped and refined her own authorial voice throughout her long, thriving career?and by explicitly connecting such insights to his substantial archival findings?Smith opens a window onto the literary interdiscursivity and cultural dynamics connecting the private and public spheres in that same period. Smith's book, which includes valuable reference tools such as a 'List of Repo sitories' (pp. ix-xix), a 'First Line Index ofManuscript Verse by Hannah More' (pp. 221-24), and a 'Bibliography ofRecent Criticism on Hannah More' (pp. 225 32), consists of two main sections. The first, described as 'a narrative analysis' (p. xxiv) and preceded by a preface (pp. xxi-xxvi) stating the aims of the study and alerting the reader to the immense and yet uncharted scale ofMore's manuscript production and literary output, is developed forcefully through a scholarly and engaging introduction (pp. 1-120). This in turndirects the reader, under a number of subheadings, to the extraordinarily varied aspects and forms ofMore's sociable milieu and manuscript production. The second section, where Smith's findings are ordered to form an unparalleled archival resource for this author, describes More's 'voluminous store of extant literarymanuscripts and letters' for the first time (p. xxvi), and lists them according to genre: 'Verse' (pp. 121-65), 'Prose' (pp. 165-72), 'Drama' (pp. 172-73), and 'Letters' (pp. 175-220). Smith's thorough and painstaking investigation was inspired by his discovery in 2003 of the transcripts of fortyunpublished poems by Hannah More 'in a manu script commonplace book compiled by a childhood acquaintance' (p. vii). While there is little hope, as the author states, 'that the full extent ofMore's poetical canon will ever be established' (p. 22), awareness of the role of indirect testimonies (along with external and internal locators) inhelping to define the actual contours 846 Reviews of individual corpora and authorship within the fertile economy of sociable and artistic exchange which characterized late eighteenth-century literary elites in ge neral, and women's intellectual circles inparticular, is at the heart of Smith's choice to inventory and describe such a plethora of non-autograph material (transcripts, autograph books, commonplace books, epistolary references, portraits, tokens, and memorabilia), which makes a significant contribution to themultifaceted canvas of this book. In so doing, he conveys suggestive and intriguing information about the actual extent and variety ofMore's literary production, the innerworkings of her creative imagination, and 'the contemporary circulation and reception history of her writings' (p. xxiv). In line with his stated objectives, Smith identifies a wealth of undocumented autographs and transcripts of letters and poetic and prose fragments by More. He also charts, and this makes indeed for compelling reading for literary and cultural historians alike, themultiple migration' routes of her previously largely unfathomed epistolary and literarymanuscripts, tracing them back to public and private repositories in ninety-five British and North American locations and providing exhaustive and richly detailed records according to a template which improves on the Index ofEnglish LiteraryManuscripts and Letters, 4 vols (London: Mansell...