Coelebs in Search of a Wife — Hannah More

Coelebs in Search of a Wife is a novel by Hannah More. It was followed by Coelebs Married. In Coelebs in Search of a Wife More introduces us to a wealthy twenty-three-year-old bachelor, who styles himself "Coelebs" (unmarried), but is seeking a wife. After the death of his father, he leaves the north of England to London where he encounters a fashionable array of eager mothers and daughters before he visits the Hampshire home of his father's friend, Mr. Stanley. Stanley's daughter, Lucilla, is both an intellectual and a domestic woman, and Coelebs' ideal partner. Coelebs in Search of a Wife is a novel about the meeting of these two minds, More shows the ways in which a couple becomes truly "matched" as opposed to merely "joined."