Blush, grandeur, blush 
Norma Clarke
The first edition of the Life and Correspondence of Mrs Hannah More sold out within three weeks; a second and third followed rapidly. ‘Holy Hannah’, as Horace Walpole called her (William Cobbett called her ‘the Old Bishop in petticoats’), was already a celebrity. William Roberts, the family friend entrusted with the task of producing the book, made her into a saint. He presented her as a vessel chosen by God, who had carried her ‘through great temptations and trials’ to her ‘exemplary eminence’.
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Norma Clarke is the author of Dr Johnson’s Women and The Rise and Fall of the Woman of Letters. She teaches in the English Departmentat Kingston University in Surrey.
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