EARLY MODERN WESTERN RELIGIOUS STUDIES

Abstract

A mountain of patient research and unabating industry representing fourteen years of study and many thousands of miles of travel in America and Europe have produced an indispensable tool for librarians, hymnologists, antiquaries, and bibliographers. Selma Bishop's new book, Isaac Watt's Hymns and Spiritual Songs, comes at a time when the English-speaking world commemorates the tercentenary of the great man's birth. The greatness of Watts and his work in hymnology cannot be missed even by a cursory examination of the 500 pages of Dr. Bishop's handsome volume, which show, too, how far-reaching was Watt's fame, spanning the centuries, and even waxing to the end of the last century. Over 670 editions of The Hymns and Spiritual Songs stretching from 1707 to 1881 are listed and located, and each is fully and meticulously described as it came under the scrutinizing eye of the bibliographer. The book must surely be the most exhaustive catalogue and description of the extant editions of Watt's great books. Dr. Bishop's volume should also prove of interest to the sociologist, as it affords a full record of the publishing history of a famous innovating religious work, showing its initial wide popularity and ultimate demise. One must not overlook Dr. Bishop's own collated and definitive edition of Watt's Hymns and Spiritual Songs, published by The Faith Press, London, in 1962, of which the present reviewer wrote in appraisement. That book and this new one should be in the hands of all serious students of hymns.