Stone, Wilbur Macey
The divine and moral songs of Isaac Watts by Wilbur Macey Stone is a bibliographical and historical study written in the early 20th century. It explores the origin, influence, and extraordinary publishing history of Isaac Watts’s children’s hymns, pairing an appreciative essay with a meticulous census of editions, variants, illustrations, and musical settings in Britain and America. The focus is on how a small devotional collection shaped children’s reading, worship, and morals across two centuries, and how editors, printers, and educators adapted it over time.The opening of this work begins with an apologia: a collector’s confession of delayed publication and a personal passion for early children’s books, followed by a framing of Watts’s Songs beside the New England Primer and their enduring phrases (“Let dogs delight to bark and bite,” “How doth the little busy bee”). It sketches the pedagogical world that first embraced the Songs, notes their far greater survival and circulation than the Primer, and offers a brisk life of Watts from precocious Dissenter child to frail pastor sheltered by the Abney family, where the 1715 first edition was dedicated to their daughters. Stone quotes the original preface to educators, traces later imitations and responses (Barbauld, Oakman, the Taylor sisters), and details theological revisions that softened hellfire or altered lines, along with Americanized readings and printing errors. He samples ownership inscriptions, Sunday-school use, il…
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