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For biographical information on Anne Steele, click here;; for selections from her letters, click here. For a more complete biographical sketch, along with a discussion of her poetry, see the "Introduction" to Anne Steele in Timothy Whelan, gen. ed., Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840 (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011), vol. 1, ed. Julia B. Griffin, pp. 1-29. For the complete poetry, prose, and correspondence, including previously unpublished hymns, poems, and prose meditations, see Nonconformist Women Writers, vols 1 and 2 (Julia B. Griffin, volumes editor).
The texts below of the hymns that appeared in A Collection of Hymns adapted for Public Worship are taken from the 1780 edition of Steele's Poems on Subjects Chiefly Devotional (the use of roman numerals to divide the stanzas has been omitted in this online edition). Longer hymns were generally reduced to no more than 7-8 stanzas (the actual listing of the stanzas used in the Collection is included in the footnote for each hymn). Alterations do occur between the version of Steele's hymn in the Collection and its appearance in Poems, mostly having to do with punctuation and capitalizations, although word changes are not uncommon, often involving the exchange of a personal singular pronoun to a plural pronoun more fitting for congregational singing. Any variants between the published hymns in Poems and the original manuscripts which reside in the Steele Collection, Angus Library, Regent's Park College, Oxford, as well as annotations and notes, can be found in Julia B. Griffin, ed., Volumes 1 and 2 of Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840, 8 vols., gen. ed. Timothy Whelan (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011), the only scholarly edition of Anne Steele's writings.
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