Coelebs in Search of a Wife

{{Short description|1808 novel by Hannah More}}

{{infobox book

|name = Cœlebs in Search of a Wife

|image =

|caption =

|author = Hannah More

|country = London, United Kingdom

|language = English

|series =

|genre =

|publisher = T[homas] Cadell and W[illiam] Davies

|release_date = 1808

|media_type =

|pages =

|oclc = 420533354

|followed_by = Coelebs Married

}}

Coelebs in Search of a Wife (1808),{{cite book|author=[Hannah More]|author-link=Hannah More|title=Cœlebs in Search of a Wife. Comprehending Observations on Domestic Habits and Manners, Religion and Morals|location=London|publisher=Printed [by Strahan and Preston] for T[homas] Cadell and W[illiam] Davies, in the Strand|year=1808|oclc=420533354}} Two volumes. 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.

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.{{Cite journal|last=Pickering|first=Sam|date=1977|title=Hannah More's 'Coelebs in Search of a Wife' and the Respectability of the Novel in the Nineteenth Century|journal=Neuphilologische Mitteilungen|volume=78|issue=1|pages=78–85|jstor=}} 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).

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".The Frank Muir Book: An irreverent companion to social history, p. 347.