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Songs in the night / by a young woman under heavy afflictions. The fourth edition, with a supplement. Ipswich: Printed and sold by Punchard & Jermyn. Sold also by Vallance and Conder, No. 120, Cheapside, and Buckland, Paternoster-Row, London; Smitheman, Braintree; Rogers, Bury; and Loder, Woodbridge, 1788. Hardback, VG. Original calf, rubbed in places and bumped to corners. Possibly a replacement spine, still of the eighteenth century,with six panels and five raised bands, second panel with red lettering piece with gilt lettering, the other panels with circular flower motif. Crack to top front hinge but the binding strong. Three old ownership signatures to ffep. Contemporary ink stains and remains of writing to front and back end papers. xiv, 202pp. + publisher note relating to the supplement. Contents clean and bright. HARRISON, SUSANNAH (1752 1784), religious poetess, probably born at Ipswich in 1752, of poor parents, entered domestic service when sixteen. Four years after illness permanently invalided her. Although without regular education, she taught herself to write, and developed much poetic power and piety, calling her verses Songs in the Night (after Job xxxv. 10). She reluctantly consented to their publication. In the first edition, 1780, they are stated to be by a young woman under deep afflictions, and were edited by Dr. John Conder. A second edition was issued in 1781, with eleven additional pages. Dr. Conder supplied several pages of Recommendation, and Susannah added an acrostic to show her name. The fourth edition (Ipswich, 1788) was augmented with twenty-two pages of posthumous verses, and twelve more recounting her resignation and giving admonitions to her friends before she died. She died 3 Aug. 1784, and was buried in Tacket Street burial-ground, Ipswich, with an inscription recording that she wrote Songs in the Night. Susannah Harrison's poems reached a fifteenth edition in 1823. All that she wrote is strongly tinctured with religious enthusiasm. Her versification is smooth, although sometimes defaced by grammatical blunders. The influence of Ken is apparent in her earlier pieces, and that of Cowper and Newton afterwards. It is evident that she had read Milton's Ode on the Nativity. She also wrote A Call to Britain, seemingly a broadside, of which many thousands were sold in a short time. RightWayUp Books aims to provide accurate and detailed descriptions. All images are of the actual book for sale - no stock images are ever used. Seller Inventory # ABE-1696961936180
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