Hymns in Prose for Children

by Anna Laetitia Barbauld

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Genres: Poetry

42 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1781

About the author

Anna Laetitia Barbauld, née Aikin; was a prominent English poet, essayist, literary critic, editor, and children's author.

Reviews

[Mariah Dawn]

These are beautiful little hymns. Once my youngest and I worked our way through it for reading instruction this year (and I say that loosely since he has been my one who doesn’t really need any reading instruction) I put this book into our Morning Time to read to all the kids.

My favorite hymn was Hymn X ::
“Reverence therefore your own mind; receive the nurture of instruction, that the man within you may grow and flourish. You cannot guess how excellent he may become.”

[Amanda]

I love the idea of this book ... or what I thought the idea was. I thought Mrs. Barbauld had taken hymns are turned them into prose so children would better understand them. Their only title is "Hymn I" "Hymn II" etc. Initially, I wondered what hymns she was prosifying (yeah I just made that up) and was perplexed why she didn't tell us. Then I realized these were "hymns" she composed in prose instead of song. Ok cool.

Except then, while some have the feel of hymns, others didn't. I was most of the way through the book when I realized a more accurate description of the collection would be "Essays on Man, God, and Nature." Some of theses "hymns" don't even mention God! And wax eloquent about why we form into villages.

Honestly, the reading improved when I started thinking about them as the aforementioned essays instead of hymns.

Now, this reader is more advanced than I expected. Honestly, I know some adults who would be left scratching their heads at some of the words, but I also know well rounded children who would be able to decipher meaning and expand their vocabulary from this reader.

As for the printing itself ... it feels cheap. A large part of that perception is because of the text boxes on random pages. It really looks like it was typed up in MS Word and some of the text boxes were accidentally left with black lines instead of that being changed to no color. Part of the other reason are the "breath taking" illustrations.

Now, the illustrations obviously took talent, and they are beautiful. And beautifully old fashioned. But not breath taking. Given their obvious age, however, they definitely felt suited to a nice hardbound volume. The slick paperback was just the total wrong feel. I realize this is a reprint of a text over a hundred years old, but the authenticity factor was missing for me. I don't care for this printing of the work, but I do collect old readers and would LOVE having this in one of the original bindings.

[feifei]

in the preface barbauld says "But it may well be doubted, whether poetry ought to be lowered to the capacities of children, or whether they should not rather be kept from reading verse, till they are able to relish good verse: for the very essence of poetry is an elevation in thought and style above the common standard; and if it wants this character, it wants all that renders it valuable. The Author of these Hymns has therefore chosen to give them in prose." i read this as a companion for/contrast against vico's pedagogy and barbauld's opinion of 'saving' verse for later is an interesting contradiction of vico's opinion that the first language of humanity is verse/poetry. though barbauld's rhythmic prose blurs the line between prose/poetry because one could (as i did) read the whole thing as a long piece of free verse. read at the recommendation of my classmate noa, who's doing a phd in 18th century children's literature.