The hymns of Isaac Watts are a remarkable blend of biblical, theological, liturgical, poetic, musical, and practical dimensions, some of which have seldom been touched upon in previous studies of the hymn writer. In this book, you will find analyses of Watts’s texts from each of these perspectives. As shown by this study, it is not only these individual factors but their combination that made Watts’s hymns innovative but also effective and long lasting in his own time—and that makes many of them still useful and widely sung today.

Well-known hymn writer Theologian, persecuted for his beliefs Man of logic More than a biography, also theology

The name Isaac Watts is known the world over and this book will enable readers to sing his hymns with greater appreciation.

In an age of simplistic and repetitive worship songs, the church must not forget Isaac Watts, the Father of English Hymnody. In this profile of the great hymn writer, Douglas Bond writes that Watts life and words can enrich the lives and worship of Christians today.

Bringing to bear the hymnody of Dickinson's female forbears and contemporaries and the Dissenting ideology found in Isaac Watts's hymns, this study offers a critical intervention in Dickinson's use of the hymn form. Dickinson's use of bee imagery and the re-visioned notions of religious design in her 'alternative hymns' show her engaging with a community of hymn writers in ways that anticipate the ideas of feminist theologians.