"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"-- Provided by publisher.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Prologue: looking for hymns -- Introduction: a reader's hymnbook -- Interlude 1: the wide, wide world of hymns -- Church -- How hymnbooks made a people -- How to fight with hymnbooks -- Hymnbooks at church -- Giving hymnbooks, and what the hymnbook gives -- Devotion and the shape of the hymnbook -- Interlude 2: Philadelphia, 1844 -- School -- Reading the title clear: hymnbooks and literacy learning -- How hymnbooks made children's literature -- How hymns remade schoolbooks -- Singing as reading; or, a tale of two sacred harps -- Interlude 3: henry ward beecher takes note -- Home -- Did poets write hymns? -- How poems entered the hymnbook -- The return of the private hymnbook -- Emily dickinson's hymnody of privacy -- Epilogue: the hymnological decade -- Notes -- Glossary -- Index.

Online resource; title from PDF title page (EBSCO, viewed August 30, 2018).