Sensibility and Control in Hannah More's Sensibility and The Cheap Repository Tracts

This study examines how the eighteenth-century writer Hannah More negotiates the tension between the idea of sensibility and reason in her poem “Sensibility: An Epistle to the Honourable Mrs. Boscawen” (1785) and her moral tales for the working class published in a series titled The Cheap Repository Tracts (1795-98). These Tracts - a series of essays, stories and poems - were conceived by Hannah More to counter the revolutionary effects of Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man and to which she contributed over fifty titles. In her poem Sensibility, feelings or passions are domiciled primarily in the domestic space, but sensibility is valorised in the poem as it is extended beyond the family into public service. On the other hand, her stories in the tracts for the working class explore an opposition between sensibility and reason but eventually fail to harness the radical potential in the idea of sensibility. These political tracts, disguised as simple tales for the less educated, offer an example of how the upper classes in the eighteenth century sought to control popular culture through a moralistic caution for the poor not to question their place.