It is a great help towards more, thoughtful worship if we know something about the great company of men and women who wrote the classic hymns of Britain - some thing about their lives, their spiritual stories and their records as authors. This book gives us the essential facts together with a critical commentary. The result is a fresh introduction to a most interesting slice of history, from Isaac Watts publishing his ‘songs before unknown' in 1707, through the Wesleys and the Catholic Revival, to the death of the prolific John Ellerton in 1893.