Book contents
- Frontmatter
- CONTENTS
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Hannah More and David Garrick: Patronage and Friendship
- 2 A Middling-Class Poet-Maker: Hannah More and Ann Yearsley
- 3 Patronage, Gratitude and Friendship, 1785–90
- 4 ‘Such is Bristol's Soul’: Patronage and Rivalry
- 5 Novel Writing and the French Revolution
- 6 Romantic Bristol: Creative Networks in the 1790s
- 7 Afterword
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Index
3 - Patronage, Gratitude and Friendship, 1785–90
- Frontmatter
- CONTENTS
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Hannah More and David Garrick: Patronage and Friendship
- 2 A Middling-Class Poet-Maker: Hannah More and Ann Yearsley
- 3 Patronage, Gratitude and Friendship, 1785–90
- 4 ‘Such is Bristol's Soul’: Patronage and Rivalry
- 5 Novel Writing and the French Revolution
- 6 Romantic Bristol: Creative Networks in the 1790s
- 7 Afterword
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Index
Summary
When Hannah More undertook to patronize Ann Yearsley in 1784, she did not do so alone. She wrote excitedly to her friends about her discovery of the milkwoman, and those friends responded with support in a variety of forms. Some, like Elizabeth Montagu and the Dowager Duchess of Portland, gave More money to pass on to Yearsley for the immediate and continued relief of her family. Other friends acted as sounding boards for More as she was considering the best way to bring Yearsley's poetry to public notice, and still others agreed to become subscribers, allowing their support to be publicly known. A letter to Mary Hamilton, niece of Emma Hamilton and governess to the Royal Household, gives an indication of the range of support at More's command:
I honour you for the warm sensibility you discover in the cause of this delightful Enthusiast – but I shall not take advantage of your feelings to pick your Pocket because I well know how many demands your bountiful heart has upon its generosity; but tho’ I shant allow your own Purse Strings to open, yet I shall be thankful to you to assist me in untying those of some of our friends when you get to Town, and dear Mrs Carter has offered her assistance, in the same cause … I have written on her subject [Yearsley's] to our friend Mr. Walpole, Mrs Boscawen, Mr. Smelt, Mrs Montagu, Pepys, and a few others who kindly offer me their assistance.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Ann Yearsley and Hannah More, Patronage and PoetryThe Story of a Literary Relationship, pp. 57 - 80Publisher: Pickering & ChattoFirst published in: 2014