The Hymnal

"Christopher N. Phillips' The Hymnbook offers the first extended historical treatment of the hymn as a read text, rather than one used solely for singing. His book demonstrates the ways that hymnbooks were used for individual expression and even the forming of corporate identity. He reframes the history of children's literature by placing the bestselling genre of children's hymnbooks at the center and offers new evidence from the Dickinson family's reading and worship practices to show how authors like Emily Dickinson used hymns to make poems. Phillips presents a longer history of devotional reading that informed the rise of hymnbook culture in the early eighteenth century and approaches the hymnbook as a media form nearly as ubiquitous as the almanac, as well as an object that shared its life with its owners and users" --