Coelebs_in_Search_of_a_Wife

<i>Coelebs in Search of a Wife</i>

Coelebs in Search of a Wife

1808 novel by Hannah More

Coelebs in Search of a Wife (1808),[1] titled in full as Coelebs in Search of a Wife. Comprehending Observations on Domestic Habits and Manners, Religion and Morals., is a novel by the British Christian moralist Hannah More. It was followed by Coelebs Married in 1814.

Quick Facts Author, Country ...

The novel focuses on Coelebs—whose name (pronounced /ˈkælɛbs/) is a Latin word meaning "single, unmarried"—a well-to-do young man who tries to find a wife who can meet the lofty moral requirements laid down by his now-deceased mother.

Coelebs in Search of a Wife was extremely popular when it was published.[2] It combined its novelistic narrative with religious lessons, which helped it to become the first nineteenth century novel to be accepted enthusiastically by the large religious reading public (in Britain, the novel had often been seen as an unrespectable and even immoral literary form).[2]

Maria Edgeworth, in an 1810 letter to Mrs. Ruxton, claims that the bachelor was modelled on a Mr. Harford of Blaise Castle.

Frank Muir said "it is now high on the list of the world's most unreadable books".[3]

References

  1. [1]
    [Hannah More] (1808). Cœlebs in Search of a Wife. Comprehending Observations on Domestic Habits and Manners, Religion and Morals. London: Printed [by Strahan and Preston] for T[homas] Cadell and W[illiam] Davies, in the Strand. OCLC 420533354. Two volumes.
  2. [2]
    Pickering, Sam (1977). "Hannah More's 'Coelebs in Search of a Wife' and the Respectability of the Novel in the Nineteenth Century". Neuphilologische Mitteilungen. 78 (1): 78–85 – via JSTOR.
  3. [3]
    The Frank Muir Book: An irreverent companion to social history, p. 347.

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Wood, James, ed. (1907). "More, Hannah". The Nuttall Encyclopædia. London and New York: Frederick Warne.

Further reading

  • Calè, L. (2000). "'A Female Band despising Nature's Law': Botany, Gender and Revolution in the 1790s". Romanticism on the Net (17): 0. doi:10.7202/005889ar.
  • Cleere, E. (2007). "Homeland Security: Political and Domestic Economy in Hannah More's Coelebs in Search of a Wife". ELH. 74: 1–25. doi:10.1353/elh.2007.0001. S2CID 143751970.
  • Pickering, Sam (1977). "Hannah More's 'Coelebs in Search of a Wife' and the Respectability of the Novel in the Nineteenth Century". Neuphilologische Mitteilungen. 78 (1): 78–85.
  • Prior, Karen Swallow (2003). Hannah More's Cœlebs in search of a wife - a review of criticism and a new analysis. Lewiston, NY [u.a.]: Mellen. ISBN 978-0773466999.
Stub icon

This article about an 1800s novel is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

See guidelines for writing about novels. Further suggestions might be found on the article's talk page.
Share this article:

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Coelebs_in_Search_of_a_Wife, and is written by contributors. Text is available under a CC BY-SA 4.0 International License; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.