Susanna Harrison

Susanna Harrison was a religious poet from Ipswich. Her father died when she was sixteen, after which Harrison began work as a domestic servant, remaining in that capacity until August 1772. About that time, she fell ill and soon became an invalid. Despite the lack of a proper education, Harrison taught herself to write and developed considerable skill as a poet. More than 130 of her verses, hymns, and meditations appeared in Songs in the Night (an allusion to Job 35:10) (1780), under the editorial supervision of Dr. John Conder, an Independent minister in London. Additional verses appeared in subsequent editions through 1784, the year of her death. Songs in the Night went through more than 20 editions in both Britain and America, making it “one of the best-selling collections written by a laboring-class poet in the late eighteenth century” (Keenan 480). Some of her works indicated that she had read Milton’s “Ode to the Nativity.” Besides Songs in the Night, Harrison may also have composed “A Call to Britain.”

For more on Harrison, see her entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004); also Bridget Keenan, “Mysticisms and Mystifications: The Demands of Laboring-Class Religious Poetry,” Criticism 47.4 (2005), 471-91; and “Susanna Harrison,” The Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology (Canterbury Press).