Author: MORE (Hannah):
Title: The Search after Happiness: A Pastoral Drama. And Other Poems.
Description: London: Printed for T. Cadell and W. Davies..., 1816. Small 8vo, 122 x 73 mms., pp. 198, engraved frontispiece, engraved vignette on title-page, contemporary straight-grain plum morocco wirh "H. Skinner." in gilt on front cover, gilt border on covers, gilt spine, no doubt an attractive binding at one time but now sadlly worn and rubbed, with top and base of spine dective. This was one of Hannah More's earliest publications, written when she was a teenager: "In her late teens Hannah More composed her first significant work, a pastoral verse drama for schoolgirls entitled The Search after Happiness, published in Bristol in 1762, in which she expresses her views on women's education and role in society. Speeches from archetypal female characters such as the fashionable Euphelia, the bookish Cleora, and the lazy Laurinda describe the various unhappinesses arising from a mistaken education, and it is left to the wise Urania to counsel her sex to cultivate the domestic virtues and to be 'Fearful of Fame, unwilling to be known' (H. More, The Search after Happiness, 1773, 1.277). The play was performed at the Mores' school and, once republished in London in 1773, was eagerly bought by the public; over 10,000 copies had been sold by the mid-1780s and a twelfth edition appeared in 1800" (Oxford DNB).

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