Hannah More Abolitionist Poetry Summary

Another crucial strategy that abolitionist poets used to make their poetry effective was making current events more accessible, especially for women. This can be demonstrated particularly by the poetry of Hannah More, due to her long friendship with famous abolitionist William Wilberforce. More’s poetry was certainly political in the sense that she attempted to demonstrate to a wider audience why slavery should be abolished, calling for social and political reform. In Anne K. Mellor’s article The Female Poet and the Poetess she proposes the idea that female poetry was “political and didactic” (page 265) and in turn had one of several purposes, whether this was to respond to political events or to call for broad social or political reform. Whatever the purpose of female poetry, Mellor argues that a female poet “grounds her social analysis on a specific political…ideology, one which entitles her to take up the stance of moral judge of the events transpiring around her” (page 265). …show more content…
In addition, More’s political ideology that slavery should be abolished certainly does allow her to have a stance in making a judgment about the current social norms that slavery is accepted. A particularly strong example of this abolitionist poetry attempting to bring political movements to a new audience is through her poetry, particularly her poem Slavery, which was later republished and titled The Slave Trade. This poem focuses on asking the reader exactly what crimes black people have committed that allows us to believe enslaving them is acceptable. She writes “what aggravated