Coelebs in Search of a Wife

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Cœlebs in Search of a Wife
Author Hannah More
LanguageEnglish
Publisher T[homas] Cadell and W[illiam] Davies
Publication date
1808
Publication placeLondon, United Kingdom
OCLC 420533354
Followed byCoelebs Married 

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.

Contents

The novel focuses on Coelebs—whose name 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. [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. 1 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.
  3. The Frank Muir Book: An irreverent companion to social history, p. 347.

Wikisource-logo.svg  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