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Summary Of Hannah More's Cheap Repository

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Hannah More, a well-educated and accomplished writer and a leading member of the influential Bluestockings group published Village Politics1 in 1792 in the aftermath of the French Revolution. The rebellion itself left in its wake effects which resonated even across the waters in Britain, leaving the country politically separated. More found herself heavily opposing the attitude of the French sympathisers, members of the British public who agreed with the need for revolution and freedom from an oppressive monarchy in Britain. As a result More published her hugely popular Cheap Repository Tracts which highlighted the dangers of rebellious thinking whilst targeting an impressionable mass audience. Village Politics, one of the many Cheap Repository …show more content…

Whilst there has been question in this essay with regards to More’s true impression of the working classes, her work did manage to include a large social class in this most significant discussion regarding the British political scene of the time, when other works of this kind such as Paine’s Rights of Man failed to engage them. With this in mind it can be easily argued that More has secured that the act of reading outside of the text was, and still is, incredibly important as well as being extremely useful in sharing views and ideas that some readers may never have considered. Village Politics may not present a fair and rational argument, as More seems as intent on discrediting Thomas Paine and his text as much as she wishes to destroy all revolutionary ideas within Britain. Whilst it can be argued that this text is indeed a piece of political propaganda rather than an educational text it is also a prime example of the effects of reading on the larger population. Not only, then, is Hannah More’s Village Politics display the effect of reading within this text, which is to the detriment of Tom Hod’s character, she also manages to portray how the act of reading can be simultaneously constructive and damaging both in the text’s original context and in today’s contemporary

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