ABSTRACT
Susannah Harrison's entirely pious verses, while perhaps at first unremarkable to the modern reader, were popular enough to take her only volume, Songs in the Night, into a fifteenth edition by 1823. The collection was published in London and Scotland, and went through several American editions by the early nineteenth century. The little substantive information known of Harrison's life is derived from her poems and their prefatory material. She taught herself to write while growing up in a large and impoverished family. She published her only volume anonymously in 1780, but in 1781, in the second edition, was prevailed upon to reveal her name, which she does in an acrostic. Historically, however, the role that developments within organised religion, particularly in its nonconformist denominations, had in teaching the labouring classes to read and write, and in sanctioning their 'right to write', is significant.
