British Hymn Books for Children, 1800–1900: Re-Tuning the History of Childhood by Alisa Clapp-Itnyre (review)

Inspired by the author's love of hymn singing, British Hymn Books for Children, 1800–1900 convincingly establishes the cultural importance of English hymns and their ability to empower children. "Hymn singing permeated Victorian children's lives," not only in church "but throughout the week in schools and in the home" (3). The composition of hymn texts and tunes and the publication of children's hymnals reached their peak during the nineteenth century, with popular hymnals printing over one hundred editions (3). Nevertheless, children's hymns of this period have received little attention, dismissed by scholars as inferior, sentimental, or didactic. Arguing that children's hymn singing invoked spontaneous pleasure and encouraged active, empowering, creative play, Clapp-Itnyre pronounces, "it is time for a reassessment of children's nineteenth-century hymns" (6). She spectacularly delivers by surveying over 16,000 children's hymns, using book history methods to determine hymn popularity, accompanied by close-readings of individual texts and tunes, to challenge (or "re-tune") common assumptions about nineteenth-century children's literature and culture.

This is the second monograph on Victorian literature and music by Alisa Clapp-Itnyre, displaying an impressive interdisciplinary understanding of poetic and musical forms. The rich social context and colorful anecdotes provided in each chapter recall to mind Richard Altick's The English Common Reader, which fascinated me as a graduate student with its everyday details, such as the difficulty of reading in a single-room apartment by dearly purchased candlelight. In the same way, British Hymn Books for Children defamiliarizes hymn singing by describing how it used to work. The modern experience of reading hymns and musical notes from an individual church hymnal, for example, first became common practice during the Victorian period, as Protestant churches gradually embraced congregational singing, instead of having the clerk read out lines, leading to a surge in music education in schools. But far from being limited to church, hymn singing held a place in the daily life (and death) of nineteenth-century children. Middle-class families typically sang hymns together on a daily basis, while children reportedly memorized dozens of hymns, one claiming over one hundred before age five. An essential children's literacy, hymn singing "touched all aspects of nineteenth-century childhood" (3).

Taking a nuanced approach, Clapp-Itnyre argues in chapter 1 that hymns united English children of different genders and social classes with a "common language" (53). Requiring neither book ownership, literacy, nor fees to enjoy, hymn singing could "[speak] to all genders, classes, situations, and denominations," and hymns were composed for "boys and girls without distinction" (49). Children also "sang many of the same hymns" (51). The first and second person ("I" or "we") and "inclusive language" favored in children's hymns allowed hymns originating in books for one niche audience to spread throughout a diverse cross-section of English and American hymnals (52). Yet despite these commonalities, hymn singing practices reflected the sharp social divisions of nineteenth-century English society. Children of different classes enjoyed vastly different opportunities for leisure time and school, during which they learned and sang hymns. Breaking down hymnals by the different schools and churches named in their titles, Clapp-Itnyre identifies the aesthetic styles and subject matter favored by (or written for) singers of different social classes. Her meticulous research reveals what kind of hymns were composed for charity orphan hymnals, as opposed to working-class Sunday school hymnals, or which were sung in middle-class homes by the piano and which by church choirs in public schools attended by privileged male children, complete with charts showing the reprinting of hymns over time. (Readers can hear these hymns sung by children on the author's website.)

Building on this overview, chapter 2 calls into question the typical grand narratives of how children's literature changed over the course of the nineteenth century (e.g., instruction to delight; "Evangelical didacticism" to "Romantic idealism"). Instead...