ÉPARA êPAR@ ` áTEXT ` ÆCrosby, Fanny1820╨1915hymn writer and poetBorn in Southeast, Putnam County, New York, on March 24, 1820, Frances Jane Crosby lost her sight to an eye infection and medical ignorance at the age of six weeks. She nonetheless grew up an active and happy child in North Salem, New York, and from 1828 in Ridgefield, Connecticut, where her widowed and remarried mother took her. From 1835 to 1843 she attended the New York Institution for the Blind in New York City. Her inclination to versify was encouraged by a visiting Scottish phrenologist, who examined her and proclaimed her a poet. Thereafter she was the school╒s chief ornament. She contributed a poetic eulogy on President William Henry Harrison to the New York Herald in 1841 and subsequently published verses in other newspapers. She was featured in a troupe of students who made public appearances in Hudson River towns in 1842 and before joint sessions of Congress in January 1844 and April 1847. In 1844 she published her first volume, The Blind Girl and Other Poems, and in 1851 her second, Monterey and Other Poems. From the latter year she began writing verses to be set to music. With George F. Root, music instructor at the school, Crosby wrote a successful cantata, ╥The Flower Queen╙; and she also wrote lyrics for scores of songs, some of which, such as ╥Hazel Dell,╙ ╥There╒s Music in the Air,╙ and ╥Rosalie, the Prairie Flower,╙ were widely popular. After her graduation Fanny Crosby remained at the New York Institution for the Blind as a teacher of English grammar and rhetoric and of ancient history until 1858, in March of which year she married Alexander Van Alstyne, also blind, a former pupil and then also a teacher at the school. In that year she published her third volume, A Wreath of Columbia╒s Flowers. About 1864 Crosby began writing hymns. Like her poetry, her hymns suffered generally from clichÄ and sentimentality, but they also displayed an occasional gleam of more than ordinary talent. Their most striking quality, however, was their number: Fanny Crosby wrote in all between 5500 and 9000 hymns, the exact count hidden by her having used a great many pseudonyms (as many as 200, according to some sources) to preserve her modesty. The best known of her hymns included ╥Safe in the Arms of Jesus,╙ ╥Rescue the Perishing,╙ ╥Jesus the Water of Life Will Give,╙ ╥Blessed Assurance,╙ ╥The Bright Forever,╙ ╥Savior, More Than Life to Me,╙ and ╥Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior.╙ They were especially popular in the Methodist Church, which for a time observed an annual ╥Fanny Crosby Day.╙ Most prominent among her many musical collaborators was Ira D. Sankey. In 1897 she published a final volume of poetry, Bells at Evening and Other Verses, and she later wrote two volumes of autobiography, Fanny Crosby╒s Life-Story, 1903, and Memories of Eighty Years, 1906. Her last years were passed in Bridgeport, Connecticut, where she died on February 12, 1915. ╞styl ` ! ¬ 5¬ 5¬ . !I ═ !I ▄ !I ∩ !I !I ' !I ? !I å 5¬ ç !I δ !I !I 5¬ !I
