“A Task of Glory All Thine Own:” Hannah More and women’s biblical poetry of the early nineteenth century

In the introduction to their anthology of collected poetry inspired by the Bible, Atwan and Wieder identify English poetry’s “two great heritages” as “the classical and the scriptural or…the Hellenic and the Hebraic” and note that the scriptural tradition, although equally significant, has failed to be awarded the same status and attention as the classical (xix). These anthologies foreground a sidelined and yet significant vein running through our literary heritage and include an eclectic collection of poetic voices representing “a diversity of countries, cultures, communities, and idioms” (xx). Notwithstanding the editors’ attempts to present a range and variety of poetic responses to scripture, there is a disappointingly small representation of female voices, particularly those drawn from the eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Although the editors note that contemporary women poets are playing an important role in reinventing scriptural poetry, they give comparatively little attention to earlier generations of women poets who helped to shape a female scriptural poetic tradition. Within the displaced scriptural poetic heritage women poets are, therefore, doubly displaced and their contributions to this body of work have yet to be fully recognised and explored.