Fanny Crosby

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Jane van Alstyne (née Crosby; March 24, 1820 to 1915), also known as Fanny Crosby, was an American mission worker, poet, lyricist, and composer.

Despite being blind from the start of life, she was one of the most prolific hymnists in history, recording more than 8,000 hymns and gospel songs, with over 100 million copies sold.

She is also known for her teaching and her rescue mission work.

She was known as the "Queen of Gospel Song Writers" and as the "Mother of modern congregational singing in America" by the end of the nineteenth century, with most American hymnals featuring her work.

Ira Sankey attributed the Moody and Sankey evangelical campaigns in large part to Crosby's hymns.

"Pass Me Not, O Gentle Saviour," "Blessed Assurance," "Jesus Is Tenderly Calling Home," "Blessed Teasing," "Rescue the Perpetr", and "To God Be the Glory" are among Crosby's most popular songs.

Some publishers were reluctant to have so many hymns written by one person in their hymnals, so Crosby's career included more than 1,000 secular poems and four books of poetry, as well as two best-selling autobiographies.

In addition, she co-wrote popular secular songs, political and patriotic songs, and at least five cantatas on biblical and patriotic subjects, including The Flower Queen, the first secular cantata by an American composer.

She was committed to Christian rescue efforts and was known for her public speaking.

Early life and education

Frances Jane Crosby was born in Brewster, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) north of New York City, on March 24, 1820. She was John Crosby's only child, as well as his second wife Mercy Crosby, both of whom were relatives of Revolutionary War spy Enoch Crosby. He was a widower with a daughter from his first marriage. According to C. Bernard Ruffin, John and Mercy were possibly first cousins; however, "by the time Fanny Crosby started to write her memoirs [in 1906], the fact that her mother and father were involved [in 1906] had become a point of embarrassment, and she denied knowing anything about his lineage."

Crosby was proud of her Puritan roots. She traced her ancestry back to Anna Brigham and Simon Crosby, who arrived in Boston in 1635 (and were among Harvard College's founders); their descendants married into Mayflower families, making Crosby a descendant of Elder William Brewster, Edward Winslow, and Thomas Prence, a member of the exclusive Daughters of the Mayflower.

She was also a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and she penned the Connecticut branch's state song. Fanny was also a cousin of Presbyterian minister Howard Crosby and his neoabolitionist son Ernest Howard Crosby, as well as singers Bing and Bob Crosby.

Crosby, a six-week old boy, had a cold and inflammatory eye inflammation. To treat the discharges, mustard poultices were used. According to Crosby, this procedure damaged her optic nerves and blinded her, but modern doctors believe that her blindness was more likely congenital, and that, given her age, may not have been apparent by her parents.

Fanny died in November 1820 at the age of six months, so her mother and maternal grandmother Eunice Paddock Crosby (born about 1778; died about 1821) raised her daughter. These women grounded herself in Christian values, assisting her in memorizing long passages from the Bible, and became a member of the John Street Methodist Episcopal Church in Manhattan.

The family migrated from North Salem, New York, where Eunice had been raised when Crosby was three years old. She was examined by surgeon Valentine Mott in April 1825, who found that her illness was inoperable and that her blindness was permanent.

Crosby's first poem, which was describing her illness, was published at age eight. "It seemed intended by God's gracious providence that I should be blind all my life," she later said, and I thank him for the dispensation." I would not accept it if perfect earthly sight were offered to me tomorrow. I may not have sung hymns to the praise of God if I had been distracted by the beautiful and interesting aspects of me. "When I get to heaven, the first thing that will ever gladden my eyes will be my Savior," she said. "If it hadn't been for her illness," biographer Annie Willis wrote, "She may not have so good a education or aspire so high a reputation," she says, and certainly not so fine a memory."

Mercy and Fanny migrated to the home of a Mrs. Hawley in Ridgefield, Connecticut, in 1828. They attended the Presbyterian church on the village green while living in Ridgefield. "A abiding Christian faith" provides the Crosby home environment, according to historian Edith L. Blumhofer. Crosby memorized five chapters of the Bible every week from the age of 10, with the help of her grandmother and later Mrs. Hawley; by the age of 15, she had memorized the four gospels, the Pentateuch, the Book of Proverbs, the Song of Solomon, and several of the Psalms. A music teacher came to Ridgefield twice a week to teach singing to her and some of the other children's siblings. She attended her first Methodist church services at the Methodist Episcopal Church around the same time, and their hymns were infectious.

Crosby was enrolled at the New York Institute for the Blind (NYIB) in 1835, right before her 15th birthday. She stayed on for eight years as an apprentice and two as a graduate student, where she learned to play the piano, organ, harp, and guitar, as well as becoming a natural soprano. Mercy remarried when she was attending NYIB in 1838, and the couple had three children together. In 1844, Mercy's husband abandoned her.

Rescue missions and later life

Crosby will no longer be known for her hymns, but she still wants to be seen primarily as a humanitarian mission worker.

According to Keith Schwanz:

Many of Fanny's hymns stemmed from her performances in the city missions, including "More Like Jesus" (1867), "Pass Me Not, O Gentle Saviour" (1868), and "Rescue the Perishing" (1869), which became the "theme song of the home missions movement" and showcased "the union of personal piety and compassion for humanity" in the city missions series. In her 1895 hymn "The Rescue Band," she commemorated the rescue mission movement.

Crosby had lived in such places as Hell's Kitchen, the Bowery, and the Tenderloin. She was aware of the increasing needs of immigrants and the urban poor, and she was eager to help others around her by urban rescue missions and other charitable ministry groups. "I made up my mind to reach those who needed assistance from the moment I got my first check for my poems." "She had "a horror of wealth," never set prices for her speaking engagements, rarely pursued honoraria, and "what little she did accept she gave away almost as soon as she received it" throughout her lifetime. She and her husband also arranged concerts, with half of the funds going to help the homeless. Crosby's sympathies for the homeless were all well-known throughout New York City, but the bulk of her involvement consisted of indirect involvement, which consisted of writing and sending poems for such occasions as well as occasional visits to those missions.

Crosby was a member of the American Female Guardian Society and Home for the Friendless (founded in 1834), who wrote a hymn for the Homeless in 1865 for which several of the Home's children wrote a hymn.

In June 1867, she wrote "More Like Jesus Would I Be," a nondenominational mission at New Bowery, Manhattan, on the sixth anniversary of the Howard Mission and Home for Little Wanderers.

After speaking at a service in spring 1868, she was inspired to write "Pass Me Not, O Gentle Saviour" after speaking out against the Lord's inability not to pass them by. In 1870, Doane brought it to life and published it in Songs of Devotion. Since Sankey used it in his crusades with Moody in Britain in 1874, "Pass Me Not" became her first hymn to have worldwide fame. "No hymn was more popular at the London meetings in 1875 [sic] than this one," Sankey said.

Crosby wrote "Fifty Years Ago" for the New-York Port Society's semi-centennial, which was founded in 1818 "for the promotion of the Gospel among the seamen in the Port of New-York" in the Port of New-York.

Crosby was attending at least weekly meetings coordinated by the interdenominational New York City Mission in July 1869. A young man was converted by her testimony, and she was inspired to write "Rescue the Perishing" based on a title and a tune given to her by William Howard Doane a few days before.

In his 1907 book My Life and the Story of the Gospel Hymns, Ira Sankey recalled the sources of "Recovering the Perishing."

Crosby, 60, made a new promise to Christ in 1880, committed to the poor" and dedicate the remainder of her life to home missionary service. She stayed in a dismal apartment on 9 Frankfort Street, which is near one of Manhattan's worst slums, until about 1884. She has continued to participate in various missions and homes from this point.

During the next three decades, she dedicated her time as "Aunty Fanny" to several city rescue missions, including the McAuley Water Street Mission, the Howard Mission, the Door of Hope, and several other skid row projects. In addition, she spoke at YMCAs, churches, and prisons about the urban poor's needs. In addition, she was a vocal promoter of Frances Willard and the Women's Christian Temperance Union, which were attempting to advocate for either abstinence or moderation in the use of alcohol.

For example, Crosby wrote the words for the song "The Red Pledge" before 1879, which advocated complete abstinence from drinking alcohol.

Crosby, a married couple's founder, founded the Helping Hand for Men in Manhattan (better known as the Water Street Mission), "America's first humanitarian initiative," which was launched by a married couple to minister, to alcohols and the homeless. Jerry McAuley, an alcoholic and thief who became a Christian in Sing Sing Prison in 1864, and his wife Maria (c.1847 – September 19, 1919) was a self-described "river robber" and "fallen woman." "Conversing and counselling with those she encountered" was a frequent feature of Crosby's Water Street Mission.

Since 1881, Crosby was in favour of the Bowery Mission in Manhattan. The Bowery Mission accepted the ministry of women, and she carried out her duties regularly, often attending and speaking in the evening meetings. Until the building was razed in 1897, she addressed huge audiences at the anniversary service each year. She would also recite a poem that she'd written for the occasion, some of which were set to music by Victor Benke, the Mission's volunteer organist from 1893 to 1997. "He Has Promised," "There's a Chorus Ever Ringing," "God Bless Our School Today," is one of six songs she and Benke performed together in 1901: "Is There Something I Can Do" ("He Has Promised." "On Joyful Wings" and "Keep On Watching."

Jerry and Maria McAuley began the Cremorne Mission in 1882 in the Cremorne Garden as a "beachhead" in a massive jungle of vice and debauchery named as Tenderloin (near Sixth Avenue). Crosby attended the evening's 8 p.m. services, where gospel songs were often sung by her and Doane, such as "ballads recalling mother's prayers, reciting the sins of intemperance, or envisioning agonizing deathbed scenes in the hopes of arousing long-buried memories and strengthening resolves." After the death of Jerry McAuley in 1884, she was inspired to write a prayer that was later included in rescue song books:

Crosby continued to promote the Cremorne Mission after McAuley's death, now led by Samuel Hopkins Hadley.

Proponents of Wesleyan/Holiness' doctrine, including the creation of the Door of Hope rescue home by socialite Emma Whittemore in a house that belonged to A.B., were some of Crosby's city missions. Simpson, who was conceived as "a refuge and a home for girls of the higher class who have been tempted from both left and right," is being pushed to rescue "fallen girls."

Crosby's hymn writing slowed in later years, but she was instrumental in speaking out and missionary work among America's urban poor right up to her death. She was well-known, and she frequented meetings with presidents, generals, and other dignitaries. "Fanny Crosby's songs, as well as her winsome demeanor, propelled her to fame," Blumhofer says.

Doane, Sankey, and Phoebe Knapp were among her wealthy friends who often contributed to her financial problems, but she also gave generously to those who were less fortunate than herself. Even though she provided fewer lyrics to them, her longtime publisher The Biglow and Main Company earned her a small stipend of $8 per week for her services to their company over the years. However, Knapp and others concluded that Biglow and Main had made significant profits as a result of Crosby's inability in compensating her properly for her service, and that she should be living more comfortably in her later years.

By May 1900, she had been suffering from a serious heart disease for a few months, but her half-sisters travelled to Brooklyn to convince her to move from her bedroom in Brooklyn's poet Will Carleton's home to Bridgeport, Connecticut. Julia "Jule" Athington, her widowed younger sister, and Jule's widowed younger sister Caroline "Carrie" W. Rider advised her to live with her widowed younger sister Caroline "Carrie" W. Rider. She and Rider rented a room together before moving to a rented house where they lived until 1906. After moving to Bridgeport, she converted her church membership from Cornell Memorial Methodist Church in Manhattan to the First Methodist Church of Bridgeport in 1904. "Van" (her husband) died in Brooklyn on July 18, 1902, when he had been living in Brooklyn. She was unable to attend the funeral due to her own poor health. Phoebe Knapp paid for his burial at Mount Olivet Cemetery, Queens County, New York.

In summer 1906, Crosby and Rider were able to 226 Wells Street in Bridgeport, Connecticut, due to Rider's cancer. Carrie died of intestinal cancer in July 1907, and Phoebe Knapp died on July 10, 1908. Ira Sankey died on Monday after sung "Saved by Grace," one of Crosby's most popular songs.

Crosby performed her songs for thirty minutes at the opening meeting of the Evangelistic Committee's seventh annual campaign in Carnegie Hall on May 2, 1911. Alice Rector and the King's Daughters of the First Methodist Church of Bridgeport, Connecticut, a nationally recognized event, was on Crosby's 94th birthday in March 1914. Hugh Main was in charge of the Violet Day.

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Early career (1843–1858)

Crosby joined a coalition of lobbyists in Washington, D.C., calling for education for the blind after graduating from the NYIB in 1843. She was the first woman to speak in the United States Senate after reading a poem there. She appeared before Congress' joint houses of Congress and quoted these words: "She read these words: 'She recited these words:

On January 24, 1844, Crosby was one of the NYIB's students who gave a concert for Congress. She quoted an original composition that called for an institution for training the blind in every state, which was lauded by John Quincy Adams, among others. She was one of a group of Blind Institution students who gave a speech to influential people in Trenton, New Jersey, where she recited an original poem calling for the care and education of the blind. In 1845, President James K. Polk paid a visit to the NYIB, and Crosby recited a poem she wrote for the occasion that praised "republic government" in honor of the event. She appeared in 1851 at the New York state legislature.

Crosby spoke at the Boston and Philadelphia Institutions for the Blind in April 1846, "to advocate for the education of the blind in Boston, Philadelphia, and New York." She testified before a special congressional subpoena, and she appeared in the music room at the White House for President Polk and his wife. Including her own composition, it was one of the songs she performed as she accompanied herself on the piano: her own composition.

Crosby, a teacher at the NYIB in 1846, was identified as a "graduate student" in the NYIB. She taught grammar, rhetoric, and history at the school until three days before her wedding on March 5, 1858. She befriended then-American president Grover Cleveland when she was teaching at the NYIB. At the end of each day, the two men spent many hours together, and she often transcribed the poems she dictated to him. He made a proposal for her that was not published in her 1906 autobiography. She wrote a poem that was read at the dedication of Cleveland's birthplace in Caldwell, New Jersey, in 1935, but she was unable to attend due to her health.

Early writing career (1841–1865)

P. T. Barnum, who later published it in his The Herald of Freedom, was sent without her knowledge by Crosby's earliest published poem. George Combe, a visiting Scottish phrenologist who pronounced her a "born poetess," visited her. The Blind Institution's faculty had a temporary reaction to her poetry, but this encouraged her to write. Hamilton Murray was hired by the Institution to teach her poetic composition, but he confessed to her inability to write poetry.

Crosby's eulogy on the death of President William Henry Harrison in 1841, the New York Herald published it, thus launching her literary career. Her poems appeared in The Saturday Evening Post, the Clinton Signal, the Fireman's Journal, and the Saturday Emporium.

Crosby was reluctant to have her poems published because she considered them to be "unfinished projects," but she eventually agreed because it would publicize the Institute and raise funds for it. (She had an illness that caused her to leave the NYIB in order to recover) After being greeted by the Institution, A Blind Girl and Other Poems was published in April 1844, including "An Evening Hymn" based on Psalm 4:8, which she described as her first published hymn. In 1853, she Monte Monterey and Other Poems, a collection of poems focusing on the current Mexican-American War, were published, as well as a poem urging for the US to assist those who have been affected by the Great Famine in Ireland. "She was under a feeling of sadness and depression at this moment," Will Carleton's 1903 autobiography said.

In 1853, Crosby's poem "The Blind Orphanage Girl" was included in Caroline M. Sawyer's "The History of the Blind Vocalists. Flowers' third book A Wreath of Columbia was published in 1858, around the time when she resigned from the Blind Institution and became married. It contains four short stories and 30 poems.

Crosby had been inspired by Stephen Foster's success, so she and George F. Root composed at least 60 secular "people's songs" or parlour songs between August 1851 and 1857, some for the famous minstrel shows. (Root taught music at the Blind Institution from 1845 to 1950). The minstrel shows had a negative reputation among some Christians and classical musicians, so their participation in these works was deliberately hidden. "Like many cultured people of the day," Bernard Ruffin writes, "[Root] considered native American music rather sluggish." Crosby's name was sometimes obscured entirely (to "George Friederich Wurzel" (German for Root), as many American artists and singers of the time) but it was eventually deleted from "George Friederich Wurzel" (German for Root).

Crosby was usually paid only $1 or $2 per poem, with no right to the song being retained by the performer or publisher of the music for many years.

George Root and Crosby, a Massachusetts immigrant, studied at the North Reading Musical Institute in North Reading, Massachusetts, in the summer of 1851. They's first song, "Fare Thee Well, Kitty Dear," (1851), evoked old-South imagery. Crosby's lyrics were based on a Roots-inspired idea, which she described as "the agony of a colored man on the death of his beloved." According to Karen Linn, it was written for and performed solely by Henry Wood's Minstrels, and then published by John Andrews, who specialized in printing "neat, quick & cheap." "This song was not a hit, and it had no lasting impact," Linn said, "the design of mourning seems to be a lover," the word not in dialect does not refer to, the word not in dialect." Root signed a three-year deal with William Hall & Son in 1852.

Despite the initial setback, Crosby continued to teach at North Reading during her vacations in 1852 and 1853, where she wrote the lyrics for several of her Root collaborations. "Bird of the North" (1852) and "Mother, Sweet Mother, Why Linger Away" were among their joint compositions. (1852).

"The Hazel Dell" (1853), a sentimental ballad released as the work of G.F. Wurzel toward the end of 1853, was Crosby and Roots' first hit song, as the work of great success. It was a success, with both Henry Wood's Minstrels and Christy's Minstrels' appearances selling more than 200,000 copies of sheet music. It is described as being on "the fringes of blackface minstrelsy," although it lacks dialect or any hint of buffoonery," about a beautiful woman who died young.

The death of "Negro minstrelsy" was announced in an article in the New York Musical Review's December 1854 issue. "Hazel Dell," as well as Stephen Foster's "Old Folks at Home" (1851) and "My Old Kentucky Home" (1853), as representative of the "fullness of the plantation process, was regarded as evidence of the plantation's gradual decline of the plantation's adoption of sentiments and poetic expressions, rather than the thoughtful Caucasian."

William Hall & Son's "Greenwood Bell" was released at the same time as "Hazel Dell," but it was credited to Root and Crosby. The tolling of the bell at the Greenwood Cemetery explains a child, a young man, and an elderly individual. "O How Glad to Get Home" and "They Sold Me Down the River (The Negro Father's Lament) were two other Crosby and Root songs (1853). Their song "There's Music in the Air" (1854) became a hit song in Variety Music Cavalcade, and it was listed in Variety Music Cavalcade as one of the most popular songs of 1854; it wasn't in songbooks until at least the 1930s and became a college song at Princeton University.

After Root's 1855 (and after being refused by Nathan Richardson of Russell & Richardson of Boston), S. Brainard's Sons of Cleveland, Ohio, 1855, dozens of Root's Sons of Cleveland, Ohio, Ohio, resold them. These six Root-Crosby songs included "O How Glad to Get Home," "The Church in the Wood," "All Together Now" and "Proud World, Good-by." "Rosalie, the Prairie Flower," about a teenage girl's death, was one of these songs. The Christy Minstrels made it popular in the 1850s; it sold more than 125,000 copies of sheet music and earned over $3,000 in royalties for Root than for Crosby; and almost nothing for Crosby. Clare W. Beames wrote the words for other writers' hits, such as "There is a Bright and Sunny Spot" (1856).

Crosby wrote the librettos of three cantatas for Root between 1852 and 1854. The Flower Queen was their first female cantata written by an American in 1852). It's a "popular operetta" that "illustrated nineteenth-century American romanticism." Crosby's 1906 autobiography introduced the cantata's theme: she recalled it: "In her 1906 autobiography, she outlined the subject: "This cantata" was the subject.

The Flower Queen was described as "a work for teenage girls" (scored for first and second soprano and alto). It was first performed by the young ladies of Jacob Abbott's Springer Institute on March 11, 1853, and Root's students at the Rutgers Female Institute immediately repeated it; R. Storrs Willis lauded it. In the first four years since its inception, it was performed over 1,000 times around the country. The success of The Flower Queen and subsequent cantatas brought great recognition and fortune to Root, but not so much for Crosby.

Daniel, or the Captivity and Restoration cantata, is the second Root-Crosby cantata based on the Old Testament's story of Daniel. Root's choir at the Mercer Street Presbyterian Church in Manhattan was founded in 1853. This cantata contained 35 songs, including music by William Batchelder Bradbury and words by Crosby and Union Theological Seminary student Chauncey Marvin Cady. The students at Root's New York Normal Institute's first choruses were first performed on July 15, 1853.

Root and Crosby collaborated on The Pilgrim Fathers in 1854, which was described as a "antebellum landmark" in dramatic cantatas. "The current evangelical reading of American history," Blumhofer says. The libretto for a cantata named The Excursion was written by Crosby and features music by Baptist music scholar Theodore Edson Perkins, one of the founders of New York music publishing house Brown & Perkins, with music by Baptist music scholar Theodore Perkins. Crosby and William Howard Doane wrote Santa Claus' Home, or The Christmas Excursion, a Christmas cantata published by Biglow & Main in 1886.

Crosby wrote songs of a political type, such as those about the Mexican–American War and the American Civil War.

She was "an ardent Democrat" and wrote a verse against Whig candidate (and eventual winner) William Henry Harrison by the 1840 US presidential election. By 1852, she changed her political allegiance from pro-slavery Democrats to the Anti-slavery Whigs, penned the poem "Carry Me On" for them. She wrote: "In November 1856, Democrat Franklin Pierce was elected as President of the United States Senate" in November.

Crosby, although she identified herself as a Democrat at the time, was an avid fan of the leading Whig, the United States. Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky, who in 1848 undertook a tour of major eastern cities. In New York City, where Crosby lived, he visited the New York Institution for the Blind. Henry Clay Jr.'s death in the Mexican–American War two years ago was commemorated on the trip. In the address of welcome on the day he came to visit us, Crosby remembered that "the great statesman was never fully himself after his son's death," and I deliberately avoided all mention of it; lest I mighty wound the heart of the man whom I had never come to love; for Mr. Clay, who was always admired rather than reverenced. His character and an earnestness in his speeches spoke to me more than I could tell. ... Without being surrounded by admiration and profound admiration, I would have pressed anyone, whether Whig or Democrat, Northerner, or Southerner, to come within range of the man's eloquence; for his personal magnetism was marvelous."

Crosby was a ardent abolitionist who praised Abraham Lincoln and the newly formed Republican Party. She was a tireless promoter of the Grand Army of the Republic and its political aspirations after the Civil War.

"Croembro" inspired "an outpouring of songs, some tragic, some militant, some even gory," Crosby's text urged her to have a strong moral conviction of the war years. She wrote many poems supporting the Union cause, including "Dixie for the Union," (1861), written before the outbreak of hostilities to the tune of Dixie (the Confederate States of America's oldest civilian anthem).

The first of the five stanzas is:

Crosby wrote the words and William B. Bradbury composed the music shortly after they met in February 1864 for the famous Civil War song "There is a Sound Among the Forest Trees." Volunteers are encouraged to join the Union forces by her book, as well as references to the Pilgrim Fathers and the Battle of Bunker Hill, which include the Pilgrim Fathers and the Battle of Bunker Hill.

During the American Civil War, Crosby wrote "Song to Jeff Davis" directed at Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederate States of America, who expressed her belief in the Union cause's morality: "Our stars and stripes are waving, and And Heav'n will speed our cause." "Good-By, Old Arm," a salute to wounded soldiers with music by Philip Philips, "Our Country," and "A Tribute" (to the memory of our deceased heroes).

Crosby wrote patriotic poems for the Daughters of the American Revolution in September 1908, including "The State We Honor" which extolls Connecticut's virtues.

Career in writing hymns (1864–1915)

Crosby was "the most prolific of all nineteenth-century American sacred song writers" at his time. She had written nearly 9,000 hymns by the end of her career, using scores of pen names assigned to her by publishers who wanted to hide the spread of her works in their journals.

According to statistics, her lyrics have sold 100 million copies. However, Crosby was manipulated by copyright laws that granted rights not to the lyricist but to the composer of the song, contributing to her longevity in the popular song market, as well as the present one, "the hypocrisy of sacred music publishers," which culminated in Crosby's "unique and possibly representative tale of female hymn writers" that made her "Crosby a living off writing songs that were not directed to the composer of the lyrics." Crosby's 1906 autobiography claimed that she wrote her hymns "in a sanctified manner" rather than for financial or commercial reasons, and that she had donated her royalties to "good causes."

Crosby set a target of converting a million people to Christ by her hymns, and she prayed that it would bring both women and men to Christ, and she kept meticulous records of those who had been saved through her hymns.

The Dictionary of American Religious Biography linked to Crosby's songs: "Her work may be deemed mawkish or too sentimental." However, Victorian society's simple, homey appeal struck a chord. Singers and listeners alike fell away from the staid, formal approach of earlier years, affecting deep emotions in singers and listeners alike. Audiences erupted to her words as the essence of authentic, heartfelt Christianity, rather than dismissing them as maudlin or saccharine. Crosby's hymns were popular because they placed "an increased emphasis on religious experiences, emotions, and testimony" and represented "a sentimental, romantic association between the believer and Christ" rather than using the negative terms of earlier hymns that stressed human sinfulness.

Crosby, according to Ann Douglas, was one of the female writers who "emasculated American religion" and helped shift it from "a strict Calvinism" to "an anti-intellective and sentimental mass culture." "Emphases in her hymns both revealed and accelerated the feminization of American evangelicalism," feminist scholars have said.

Many well-known publishers and publishing houses had her hymns published: many prominent publishers and publishing companies had her hymns published.

Howard Doane, a industrialist who became Crosby's top writer in writing gospel songs, was responsible for writing tunes for an estimated 1,500 Crosby's lyrics. Through Biglow and Main, Doane and Crosby met informally, as well as privately through Doane's Northern Baptist ministries. Crosby's business aspects of her compositions were eventually outsourced to Doane.

Crosby met wealthy Methodist Phoebe Palmer Knapp, who was married to Joseph Fairchild Knapp, co-founder of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, in early 1868. The Knapps published hymnals first published in the Sunday School of Saint John's Episcopal Church in Brooklyn, which Joseph F. Knapp designed for 22 years, although Phoebe Knapp took responsibility for 200 children in the infants' department. They first collaborated on Notes of Joy, Knapp's first hymnal edited by Knapp, who also contributed 94 of the 172 tunes, and then published in 1869 by Walter C. Palmer Jr. Crosby wrote six hymns, eight of which were titled "The Children's Friend" by Knapp, but fourteen of them were on display. Crosby wrote words in the Knapp's music room for a tune written by Knapp, but Crosby was still living at the Knapp Mansion in 1873.

Crosby worked with Ira Sankey, who helped make her "a household name" to Protestants around the world from 1871 to 1908. Though Sankey was "the premier promoter" of gospel music, "Crosby came in first as their sponsor." Many of Crosby's hymns were brought to the attention of Christians throughout the United States and Britain by Sankey's evangelist staff. Crosby was close friends with Sankey and his wife, Frances, and they often stayed with them at their home in Northfield, Massachusetts, beginning in 1886 for the annual summer Christian Workers' Conferences and later in Brooklyn. Their friendship deepened after Sankey's eyesight was ruined by glaucoma in March 1903, and they often began to compose hymns at Sankey's harmonium.

Crosby described her hymn-writing process: "It's likely that one's work with prayer should begin with a little old-fashioned," Crosby said, "It's never to start one's work with prayer, but I never start a hymn without first asking the Lord to be my inspiration.' Her talent for writing was astounding, and she could often compose six or seven hymns a day. Her poems and hymns were entirely in her head, and she performed as many as twelve hymns at once before dictating them to an amanuensis. On one occasion, Crosby composed 40 hymns before they were transcribed. Her lyrics would usually be transscribed by "Van" or later by her half-sister Carolyn "Carrie" Ryder or her assistant Eva C. Cleaveland, as Crosby herself could write little more than her name. Though Crosby had musical training, she did not write the melody for the majority of her songs. In 1903, Crosby said that "Spring Hymn" was the only hymn she wrote both the words and music.

In 1906, Crosby composed both the words and music for "The Blood-Washed Throng", which was released and copyrighted by gospel singer Mary Upham Currier, a distant cousin who had been a well-known concert performer. Crosby studied music under George F. Roots before he resigned in November 1850.

Edward S. Ninde wrote in 1921: "None would say that she was a poetess in any significant sense." Her hymns have been largely criticized. 'They are, with few exceptions, extremely poor and insecure,' according to Dr. Julian, the editor of the Dictionary of Hymnology, and others are 'crudely sentimental,' according to Dr. Julian. Any hymn books will have no place whatsoever." Crosby's "hymns have been sometimes chastised as "gushy and mawkishly sentimental," and commentators have often criticized both her writing and her theology. Nonetheless, they were'more to the genuine experience of the human heart in her day than Fanny Crosby,' said historian George C. Stebbins, who argued more sympathetically the deep longings of the human heart.' Many of her hymns have withstand the test of time, while others are still resonating with believers today."

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