Hannah More, "Lottery"

Hannah More (1745–1833).
The Wonderful Advantages of Adventuring in the Lottery!!!
London: Sold by John Marshall, Printer to the Cheap Repository for Moral and Religious Tracts, [1797]. (BRA1654)

This small sixteen-page pamphlet by Hannah More, one of her “Cheap Repository Tracts,” was priced at one penny, or less for shopkeepers or street hawkers to sell in quantity. The facetious title momentarily conceals More’s effort to discourage London’s poor from risking their money in games of chance. The moralizing text tells the story of one John Brown, who after playing the lottery falls into financial and moral ruin that leads to his imprisonment and execution. Bridwell Library’s copy, unbound and uncut, appears in essentially the original condition in which it was first offered for sale.