Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T02:00:24.011Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

WRITING FOR, YET APART: NINETEENTH-CENTURY BRITISH WOMEN'S CONTENTIOUS STATUS AS HYMN WRITERS AND EDITORS OF HYMNBOOKS FOR CHILDREN

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 March 2012

Alisa Clapp-Itnyre
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

When Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar asked in 1979, “How then – since poets are priests – can women be poets?” (Madwoman in the Attic 546), they opened up to debate the predominant ideological holdover from the Victorians that “the very nature of lyric poetry is inherently incompatible with the nature or essence of femaleness” (541). More than thirty years later, while women's poetic contributions are regularly considered by literary scholarship, I would now advocate for the woman hymn writer for children – she who, as hymn writer or editor, surely enacted the role of religious “priest” for countless generations of children during and after her lifetime, but who is all but forgotten today.

Type
Research Article
Information
Victorian Literature and Culture , Volume 40 , Issue 1 , March 2012 , pp. 47 - 81
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

WORKS CITED

Adey, Lionel. Class and Idol in the English Hymn. Vancouver: U of British Columbia P, 1988.Google Scholar
[Alexander, Cecil Frances.] Hymns for Little Children. 1848. 17th ed.London: Joseph Masters, 1858.Google Scholar
Armstrong, Isobel, and Bristow, Joseph with Sharrock, Cath, eds. Nineteenth-Century Women Poets: An Oxford Anthology. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1996.Google Scholar
Benson, Louis F.The English Hymn: Its Development and Use in Worship. 1915. Richmond: John Knox P, 1962.Google Scholar
Blessington, Francis C. “‘That Undisturbed Song of Pure Concent’: Paradise Lost and the Epic-Hymn.” Renaissance Genres: Essays on Theory, History, and Interpretation. Ed. Lewalski, Barbara Kiefer. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1986. 468–95.Google Scholar
Bradley, Ian. Abide with Me: The World of Victorian Hymns. Chicago: GIA; and London: SCM, 1997.Google Scholar
Bratton, J. S.The Impact of Victorian Children's Fiction. London: Croom Helm, 1981.Google Scholar
Brown, Penny. The Captured World: The Child and Childhood in Nineteenth-Century Women's Writing in England. New York: St. Martin's, 1993.Google Scholar
Carpenter, Mary Wilson. Imperial Bibles, Domestic Bodies: Women, Sexuality, and Religion in the Victorian Market. Athens: Ohio UP, 2003.Google Scholar
The Christian Mother's Hymn Book. London: Wertheim & Macintosh, 1855.Google Scholar
Claghorn, Gene. Women Composers and Hymnists: A Concise Biographical Dictionary. Metuchen: Scarecrow, 1984.Google Scholar
Clapp-Itnyre, Alisa. “Nineteenth-Century British Children's Hymnody: Re-Tuning the History of Childhood with Chords and Verses.” Children's Literature Association Quarterly 35.2 (2010): 144–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Curtis, Heather D. “Children of the Heavenly King: Hymns in the Religious and Social Experience of Children, 1780–1850.” Sing Them Over Again to Me: Hymns and Hymnbooks in America. Ed. Noll, Mark A. and Blumhofer, Edith L.. Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama, 2006. 214–34.Google Scholar
De Jong, Mary. “‘I Want to be Like Jesus’: The Self-Defining Power of Evangelical Hymnody.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 54.3 (1986): 461–93.Google Scholar
De Jong, Mary. “‘Theirs the Sweetest Songs’: Women Hymn Writers in the Nineteenth-Century United States.” A Mighty Baptism: Race, Gender, and the Creation of American Protestantism. Ed. Juster, Susan and MacFarlane, Lisa. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1996. 141–67.Google Scholar
Dieleman, Karen. “Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Religious Poetics: Congregationalist Modes of Hymnist and Preacher.” Victorian Poetry 45.2 (2007): 135–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Drain, Susan. The Anglican Church in Nineteenth Century Britain: Hymns Ancient and Modern (1860–1875). Texts and Studies in Religion. Vol. 40. Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen, 1989.Google Scholar
Ellis, Sarah Stickney. “Daughters of England.” 1842. The Victorian Era. Ed Joseph Black, et al. Vol. 5 of The Broadview Anthology of British Literature. New York: Broadview P, 2006.Google Scholar
Gilbert, Sandra M., and Gubar, Susan. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. New Haven: Yale UP, 1979.Google Scholar
Gray, F. Elizabeth. “‘Syren Strains’: Victorian Women's Devotional Poetry and John Keble's The Christian Year.” Victorian Poetry 44.1 (2006): 61–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Periam Hawkins], H. P. H. [Hester and Moss, Edwin, musical editor. The Home Hymn Book: A Manual of Sacred Song for the Family Circle. 1885. 2nd ed.London: Novello, Ewer, 1890.Google Scholar
Periam Hawkins], H. P. H. [Hester and Moss, Edwin. The Home Hymn Book with Accompanying Tunes: A Manuel of Sacred Song for the Family Circle. [1885]. 2nd ed.London: Novello, Ewer, [1890].Google Scholar
[Harrison, Miss.]The Weston Hymn Book for Children. London: Wertheim & Macintosh, 1849.Google Scholar
Helsinger, Elizabeth K., Sheets, Robin Lauterbach, and Veeder, William. Social Issues. Vol. 2 of The Woman Question: Society and Literature in Britain and America, 1837–1883. New York: Garland, 1983.Google Scholar
Hickok, Kathleen. Representations of Women: Nineteenth-Century British Women's Poetry. Westport: Greenwood, 1984.Google Scholar
Hobbs, June Hadden. “I Sing for I Cannot Be Silent”: The Feminization of American Hymnody, 1870–1920. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 1997.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hunter, Shelagh. “Adams, Sarah Flower.” Victorian Britain: An Encyclopedia. Ed. Mitchell, Sally. New York: Garland, 1988. 6.Google Scholar
Hymns and Rhymes for Children: By the Daughter of a Clergyman. London: Ward, Lock, and Tyler, 1871.Google Scholar
Inglis, E. W. and , J. G., eds. 282 Hymns and Melodies for School and Family Use. Edinburgh: Gall and Inglis, 1893.Google Scholar
The Internet Archive. http:\\www.archive.org. Web. 2 January 2011.Google Scholar
Jay, Elisabeth. “Charlotte Mary Yonge and Tractarian Aesthetics.” Victorian Poetry 44.1 (2006): 43–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Julian, John, ed. A Dictionary of Hymnology. 1907. Rev. ed. 2 vols. London: J. Murray, 1915.Google Scholar
Kooistra, Lorraine Janzen. Christina Rossetti and Illustration: A Publishing History. Athens: Ohio UP, 2002.Google Scholar
Leeson, Jane Eliza. Hymns and Scenes of Childhood; or, a Sponsor's Gift. London: James Burns, 1842.Google Scholar
Leeson, Jane Eliza. The Wreath of Lilies. A Gift for the Young. London: James Burns, 1847.Google Scholar
Leighton, Angela, and Reynolds, Margaret, eds. Victorian Women Poets: An Anthology. Cambridge: Blackwell, 1995.Google Scholar
Lenti, Vincent A. “Hymns for Little Children: The Life and Legacy of Cecil Frances Alexander.” The Hymn 50.3 (1999): 32–36.Google Scholar
“Little.” The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed.Oxford: Oxford UP, 1989. 1040–41.Google Scholar
Manwaring, Randle. A Study of Hymn-Writing and Hymn-Singing in the Christian Church. Texts and Studies in Religion. Vol. 50. Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellon, 1990.Google Scholar
McCutchan, Robert Guy. Our Hymnody: A Manual of the Methodist Hymnal. 2nd ed.New York: Abingdon, 1937.Google Scholar
Melnyk, Julie. “The Congregational ‘We’: Women's Hymns and the Poetry of Community.” Unpublished study.Google Scholar
Nutter, Charles S., and Tillett, Wilbur F.. The Hymns and Hymn Writers of the Church: An Annotated Edition of the Methodist Hymnal. New York: Eaton and Mains, 1911.Google Scholar
Patmore, Coventry. The Angel in the House. 1854. 5th ed.London: George Bell, 1878.Google Scholar
Pitman, E. R.Lady Hymn Writers. London: T. Nelson, 1892.Google Scholar
Rogal, Samuel J., comp. The Children's Jubilee: A Bibliographical Survey of Hymnals for Infants, Youth, and Sunday Schools Published in Britain and America, 1655–1900. Westport: Greenwood, 1983.Google Scholar
Romanes, George J. “Mental Differences Between Men and Women.” Nineteenth Century. Vol. 21 (1887). Rpt. in Rowold, Katharina, ed., Gender & Science: Late Nineteenth-Century Debates on the Female Mind and Body. Bristol, England: Thoemmes P, 1996. 169–92.Google Scholar
Routley, Erik. Hymns and Human Life. 1952. London: John Murray, 1959.Google Scholar
Ruskin, John. “Of Queen's Gardens.” Sesame and Lilies: Three Lectures. 1864–65. Chicago: A. C. McClurg, 1889.Google Scholar
Ryden, E. E.The Story of Christian Hymnody. Philadelphia: Fortress P, 1959.Google Scholar
Semple, Rhonda Anne. Missionary Women: Gender, Professionalism and the Victorian Idea of Christian Mission. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell, 2003.Google Scholar
Showalter, Elaine. A Literature of their Own: British Women Novelists from Brontё to Lessing. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1977.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tamke, Susan S.Make a Joyful Noise Unto the Lord: Hymns as a Reflection of Victorian Social Attitudes. Athens: Ohio UP, 1978.Google Scholar
[Taylor, Anne and Jane.] Hymns for Infant Minds. 1809. 5th ed.Josiah Conder, 1812. The Opie Collection of Children's Literature. University of Oxford for the Bodleian Library. Microfilm.Google Scholar
Trudgill, Eric. Madonnas and Magdalens: The Origins and Development of Victorian Sexual Attitudes. New York: Holmes and Meier, 1976.Google Scholar
Tuchman, Gaye, with Fortin, Nina E.. Edging Women Out: Victorian Novelists, Publishers, and Social Change. New Haven: Yale UP, 1989.Google Scholar
Watson, J. R., ed. An Annotated Anthology of Hymns. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2002.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Watson, J. R.The English Hymn: A Critical and Historical Study. Oxford: Clarendon, 1997.Google Scholar
Woods, M. A., comp. Hymns for School Worship. London: Macmillan, 1890.Google Scholar
[Yonge, Frances M., comp.] The Child's Christian Year: Hymns for Every Sunday and Holy-Day, Compiled for the Use of Parochial Schools. Oxford: J. H. Parker, 1841.Google Scholar