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interview: karen swallow prior

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{ in this interview, karen swallow prior discuss her process and the challenges of writing toward truth }

you’re primarily known as—I think—a lover and evangelist for the transformative power of words and literature. that said, i wonder if you can tell us how this project“fierce convictions: the extraordinary life of hannah more—fits into your overall interests as a teacher of literature, promoter of the poetic, and woman of “fierce convictions” yourself

In her life and work, Hannah More embodied these very things. As soon as I discovered More in a dusty old book while doing my doctoral research, I knew I had found a kindred spirit. More started out as a teacher and brought to that position a love of language and words which she’d displayed since she was a toddler. When she left classroom teaching to become a professional writer (she was one of the earliest women to make a living through writing), she continued to teach through her writing. While much of her later work was didactic and is ill-suited to most tastes today, even this work consistently displays a poetic vision of life that is captured in her novel insights, acerbic wit, and keen perceptiveness. In her best work—the ballads and tales she published as cheap tracts for the poor—we see her extraordinary ability to present vivid stories that had the power to transform people’s lives.

 

hannah more’s story is obvious full of the things that make a profound life: adversity and transformation, the power of compassion and resolve, and—surprisingly—poetry. i wonder if you might talk about how being a poet prepared hannah to do kingdom work for the least. i wonder, do you think hannah could have done such great works for others if she hadn’t been a poet?

More really is a rare figure in the breadth and depth of her writing. She began in the vein of a Neoclassical poet and dramatist, and her early works are sometimes erudite to the point of obnoxiousness (a snare many a young pedant has fallen into). Yet, as her life deepened and matured—through both disappointments and successes as well as through her growing faith—one can see a humanizing force at work in her writing as it occurs in her life. It’s important to remember that More lived in an age before the idea of caring for the poor existed as we know it today. Many of the powerful in her society opposed her efforts to teach the poor to read. While More was not the first to undertake such an effort, she was one whose efforts were most lasting.


I think her poet’s heart—that ability to see beyond the surface of life and to find the deeper connections—fueled not only her vision and passion, but also gave her the ability to reach those outside her immediate sphere—and this includes not only the poor who were below her on the social scale, but also the upper class people above her, for whom she also wrote.

In some ways, where she waxes most poetic, perhaps, is in her musings about God and the Christian faith. Her beliefs are very conservative, yet eloquently expressed:

All the doctrines of the gospel are practical principles. The word of God was not written, the Son of God was not incarnate, the Spirit of God was not given, only that Christians might obtain right views and possess just notions. Religion is something more than mere correctness of intellect, justness of conception, and exactness of judgment. It is a life-giving principle. It must be infused into the habit, as well as govern in the understanding; it must regulate the will, as well as direct the creed. It must not only cast the opinions into a right frame, but the heart into a new mould. It is a transforming, as well as a penetrating principle. It changes the tastes, gives activity to the inclinations, and, together with a new heart, produces a new life.

 

one thing i’ve always enjoyed about your writing, especially your articles that have appeared over the past couple years, is your devotion to representing tradition and history in a nuanced way—whether you’re talking about marriage or morality, you handle the subjects with depth and resist the impulse to flatten a dimensioned idea (often a feat, if you ask me, in writing in the digital age). how do you feel you’ve brought such craft and dimension to hannah more? and what were the challenges of telling about her life’s work?

Many, many pages have been written about Hannah More during the nearly 200 years since her death, although far fewer in recent times. Most of this writing has treated her as either a holy saint or a hateful prude. While I greatly admire More and wanted to present a figure worthy of emulation, I recognized not only that she had plenty of human frailties and inconsistencies, but also that the only people worth emulating are imperfect ones. For me, any figure interesting enough to write (or read) about must be a truly human one. In that respect, More is eminently interesting. I only hope I succeeded in communicating that in the book.

 

can you talk about the nature of creating a book like this one—the nitty-gritty process of it? how did you go about doing and compiling your research? how did your perceptions about the process of your own writing evolve? can you talk about a time you were tempted to scrap the project, and then how you resolved to power through?

Honestly, I had no idea how hard it would be to write this book. It’s a good thing I didn’t know ahead of time, or I might not have dared to undertake it. I had researched More some years ago to write my dissertation on her. But the focus of my approach then was more literary, less historical. Biography is really tough, particularly for someone who is not a trained historian (which I am not).


It’s one thing to write history and get all the facts (hopefully!) correct. It’s another thing to write a compelling story about a life.

And it is something else altogether to do both—write an interesting story that gets all the facts (which are often scarce, contradictory, or speculative) right. And then there was also the fact that More’s literary output fills volumes. As tough as it was for me to write a biography and as often as I felt inadequate to the task, I still could have written much more about her. The book barely scratches the surface of her life and work. I had estimated the length for my publishing contract and estimated low, thinking it would be acceptable to go over. However, going over the word count requires appropriate budgeting, so the amount I wanted to go over had to be negotiated. I had to scrap an entire chapter and cut a great deal elsewhere: and still I turned in about 10,000 words more than the contract called for. Yet, having the contract forced me to think of the writing as a job that I was legally bound to complete, and that was a tremendous help in keeping my butt in the chair and getting it done. Even more inspiring was travelling to England to visit the spots where More lived, worked, and died. The trip was truly magical, and that magic made its way into the book—of that I am sure.

 

last, what was the biggest surprise in writing a book like this—for you as a creative, for you as a learner? how did making this book and telling this story shape you as a creative, teacher, author, Christian, wife, friend, etc.? for lack of a better way, how did this book make you a different human being?

This project required more discipline than anything I’ve done in a long time. It is hard for me not to compare it to the writing of my doctoral dissertation, which most people find to be the hardest thing they’ve ever done, as I did. I think this project was harder for the reasons stated above. So as much as being disciplined and seeing the fruits of that discipline makes you a better person, this book has done that for me.

As far as the surprises, I don’t think of myself as much a creative person as I am an analytical one. Yet, I found many little surprises along the way as I figured out every now and then how to state dry, historical material in fresh, poetic ways. I remember once after an entire day of writing being utterly delighted with just one sentence I had written. I still love that simple sentence for its rhythm and the sense it captures about that point in her life: But her inkwell wasn’t empty yet.

I definitely see a growth and maturity in myself stylistically as a result of writing this book. Part of that is owing to working with two outstanding editors at Thomas Nelson. Good editors are the best gift a writer can have, and I am thankful for that gift.

Writing about a Christian such as More for an audience that I hope will be broad, even if primarily Christian, forced me to not only write but to think in ways about communicating effectively with different kinds of audiences, and therefore trying to understand those audiences. That’s a gift permeates my life far more than just the part involved in writing this book, and I think that makes me a better teacher, Christian, and human being.

 

can you provide our readers with a short excerpt?

This excerpt is from the chapter on More’s work in the Abolitionist movement:

It was a multi-faceted campaign which enlisted preachers, poets, and parliamentarians. And it was a brilliant strategy. “You know enough of life,” Wilberforce told More, “to be aware that in parliamentary measures of importance, more is to be done out of the House than in it.” In other words, changing the minds in Parliament would require changing the heart of the nation first. It is the same idea as that famously expressed in the following century by the Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. “Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world,” he wrote in his Defense of Poetry. The battle against slavery was, in many ways, led by the poets (and other writers and artists) who expanded their country’s moral imagination so it might at last see horrors too great for the rational mind to grasp.

“Slavery” was written in a hurry—even by the standard of More’s usual quickness. But it was a crucial moment politically for the cause of abolition. As More told her sister, “The slave cause gains proselytes, and of course opposers, every day.” She continued, “My little poem on Slavery is too short, and too much hurried; it of course will be very imperfect; for I did not begin it till a fortnight ago. I would on no account bring out so slight and so hasty a thing on any less pressing occasion, but here time is every thing.” Yes, time was everything, and it was time to for the curtain over slavery to be drawn back.

The poem begins with a theological examination of liberty, casting it as a source of heavenly light, one to which Britain has no greater right than Africa. Moving from abstract theological and political ideals to the concrete reality of slavery, the poem slowly builds to a passionate pitch:

Whene’er to Afric’s shores I turn my eyes,
Horrors of deepest, deadliest guilt arise;
I see, by more than Fancy’s mirror shown,
The burning village, and the blazing town:
See the dire victim torn from social life,
See the sacred infant, hear the shrieking wife!
She, wretch forlorn! is dragged by hostile hands,
To distant tyrants sold, in distant lands:
Transmitted miseries, and successive chains,
The sole sad heritage her child obtains.
E’en this last wretched boon their foes deny,
To weep together, or together die.
By felon hands, by one relentless stroke,
See the fond links of Nature broke!
The fibres twisting round a parent’s heart,
Torn from their grasp, and bleeding as they part.

The slaves’ suffering, painted so vividly in these lines, is at once the proof of their humanity and an indictment of the slave trade. The poem demands empathy from the reader.

 

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Karen Swallow Prior, Ph. D., is an award-winning Professor of English at Liberty University. She is the author of Booked: Literature in the Soul of Me (T. S. Poetry Press 2012) and Fierce Convictions: The Extraordinary Life of Hannah More—Poet, Reformer, Abolitionist (Thomas Nelson 2014). Prior is a contributing writer for Christianity Today, Think Christian, and The Atlantic. She is a Research Fellow with the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, a member of INK: A Creative Collective and serves on the Faith Advisory Council of the Humane Society of the United States. She and her husband live in rural Virginia with sundry dogs, horses, and chickens.


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