Ann Yearsley (1756-1806), poet and protégé of Hannah More, established a circulating library in the Colonnade which still stands at the base of the Suspension Bridge. In 1784, Hannah More –established poet and civic commentator – was told the story of Ann Yearsley, an indigent milkwoman who wrote verses in Bristol. Yearsley’s family had become impoverished in the previous bitter winter and her elderly mother had died of starvation. Ann Yearsley’s three volumes of poetry, play, Earl Goodwin (1789), and novel, The Royal Captive, were all made possible by the initial, short-lived contact with More, who gave the poet patronage and publication. Just like her patron Hannah More, Yearsley wrote an anti-slavery poem: A Poem on the Inhumanity of the Slave Trade (1788).