Divine Songs

Watts, Isaac, 1674-1748Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.4

Word count: 44K words
Chapters: 5

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Divine Songs by Isaac WattsAuthor: Watts, Isaac, 1674-1748,Language: English, Class: PZ: Language and Literatures: Juvenile belles lettres, Release Date: Sep 11, 2004

Editor's review

Divine Songs is a collection of religious verse for children by the eighteenth-century English writer Isaac Watts, long used in the English-speaking world as an introduction to faith in the home and in Sunday schools. Watts writes with plain diction and regular rhythm, turning abstract doctrine into images and scenes a child can grasp, and many of these poems are still sung in church traditions in English-speaking countries. The work matters not only as literature—it is a key step in the development of English children's poetry—but as a record of how people three centuries ago taught morals and faith to children in verse. Project Gutenberg's public-domain electronic edition gives readers free access to the original text and serves well as a primary source for the study of English literature, the history of children's education, or religious culture. It is best read not merely as a children's book but as a window onto Puritan ideas of education and the tradition of English hymnody.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Scholars or students of English children's literature and the hymn tradition
Readers interested in Puritan culture and eighteenth-century religious education
English learners who want to read a public-domain classic closely

Not a good fit for

Young children expecting a modern picture-book
Readers hostile to religious content who want only secular poetry
Beginners who need a Chinese translation or detailed notes

Reading tips

Read through the table of contents first, then choose several poems on related themes and read them together, observing how Watts organizes imagery and moral instruction
Read aloud alongside the musical tradition of English hymns to feel the meter and rhyme
Consult background sources and place the poems in the context of eighteenth-century children's education rather than judging them in isolation

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Is this book suitable for children to read directly?

The text is eighteenth-century English, and its vocabulary and sentence structures are somewhat distant from contemporary children; the content is mainly religious instruction. If a child has a good command of English and the family has the relevant cultural background, an adult can read selected poems with them; otherwise it is better suited to research or adult readers.

What are the features of the Project Gutenberg edition?

This is a free public-domain e-book that preserves the original text and is easy to search and copy on a computer or e-reader. It contains no modern editorial notes or introduction, so readers must supply background knowledge themselves.

What is the significance of Watts's poetry in literary history?

Watts was an important author of English hymns, and his work influenced the later writing of English children's poetry. This collection shows his attempt to convey morals and faith in simple verse and is a useful text for studying the origins of English children's literature.

Comments

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About the author

Watts, Isaac, 1674-1748 Author

Isaac Watts (1674–1748) was an English minister, poet and hymn writer, later honoured as the "Father of English Hymnody". Six of his works are held here: Hymns and Spiritual Songs, The Psalms of David, Divine Songs, A Short Essay Toward the Improvement of Psalmody, and two admonitory pieces, Watt's Songs Against Faults and Watt's Songs Against Evil. His writing consists chiefly of psalms recast in verse and hymns for public worship and family singing, marked by plain language and clear imagery and serving both doctrinal instruction and moral exhortation. His hymns circulated widely in the English-speaking world and deeply shaped later English hymn writing; public information on the details of his life is limited.