Hannah More and Ann Yearsley experienced a long-standing relationship that lasted far beyond their roles as patron and protégée. More had originally come to prominence as a playwright under the patronage of celebrated actor/manager David Garrick. When an established writer herself, she was able to assist Yearsley, bringing the young poet’s rustic voice to the attention of an eighteenth-century society hungry for the fashionable phenomenon of the ‘rural genius’.Andrews offers a timely and necessary reassessment of the careers of both Yearsley and More. Making use of newly discovered letters and poems, she provides a full analysis of the breakdown of the two writers’ affiliation and compares it to other labouring-class relationships based on patronage.

"'This is an important book, not only for the more detailed narrative it offers of this most turbulent of patronage relationships, but for the new understanding it brings of Yearsley’s place in the Cottle circle in Bristol, and of the complexities of literary patronage during the period.'"