In a Durham PhD Nancy Jiwon Cho quotes Margaret Maison's essay '"Thine, Only Thine!" Women Hymn Writers in
Britain, 1760-1835' (1986) She says it was the first serious modern critical study on women's
hymn writing, an essay giving an overview of the pre-Victorian tradition that scrutinises
the conditions in which hymns were written, and the themes and tropes that emerge.
She asserts that:
[The hymn's] extraordinary popularity gave women welcome opportunities for
authorship. Icy hostility to Christian ladies as writers melted in the sunshine of
sacred song, and those three giants of eighteenth-century hymnology, Isaac
Watts and the two Wesleys, John and Charles, all encouraged, influenced and
were influenced by women hymn-writers and hymn-singers.
One idea which Maison perpetuates in her essay, says Jiwon, is that Anne Steele is `one of
the brightest stars in the firmament of Baptist hymnody, hailed by the historians as the
"mother" of English women hymn writers' (p. 14).
Maison
writes that Steele's hymns:
echo the attractive simplicity, spontaneity and ardour of Watts and the Wesleys,
with added notes of feminine sensitivity and introspection. The love and praise
of God, the pleasures of the `grateful rapture, ' and the joys of a close personal
relationship with Jesus Christ come across strongly. Christ is frequently
addressed in the language of a lover [... ]. But He is also the crucified Saviour,
with `bloody sweat, like drops of rain'. (p. 15)
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