BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY
Smith, Emma. A collection of sacred hymns, for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Selected by Emma Smith. Nauvoo, Ill: Printed by E. Robinson. 1841.
iv[5]-351 pp. 10.5 cm.
By the summer of 1839 the Kirtland hymnbook, the 1835 Emma Smith hymnal (see this digital collection), was out of print. In July, just before the apostles left for their missions to England, Joseph Smith and the Twelve met to select hymns for a new book. Three months later the general conference in Nauvoo voted to publish a new edition of the hymns immediately. This decision was reaffirmed October 27 by the Nauvoo high council which directed Emma Smith to “select and publish a hymn–book for the use of the Church.” On December 29, 1839, the high council again voted to print 10,000 copies of the hymnbook. Ebenezer Robinson reported to the October 1840 conference that he was then making arrangements to print the hymns, and the following month he advertised for songs in the Times and Seasons (see this digital collection), “it is requested that all those who have been endowed with a poetical genius, whose muse has not been altogether idle, will feel enough interest in a work of this kind, to immediately forward all choice, newly composed, or revised hymns.”
By the middle of March 1841, the hymnal was out of press, and Robinson announced in the Times and Seasons of March 15 that copies would be bound in time for the April 6 conference. A year later Lucian R. Foster advertised the book in New York at 50¢ a copy. What the ultimate size of the edition was is unknown, but it was probably much smaller than the 10,000 ordered by the high council in December 1839. Robinson, it would seem, played the principal role in publishing the official hymnbook in 1841, just as W.W. Phelps had done in 1835. To what extent Emma Smith was involved is not known.
The 1841 hymnal retains the 1835 preface, and it includes the texts of 303 songs. Seventy–seven of the hymns are in the 1835 book, of which seventy–three are in the 1840 hymnal. Seventy–eight others are taken from the 1840 hymnal, five more are from the 1839 Elsworth hymnal (see this digital collection) and of the remaining 143 hymns, only ten are of Mormon authorship.
Excerpted and edited from Peter Crawley, A Descriptive Bibliography of the Mormon Church. Volume One, 1830-1847. (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University, Religious Studies Center, [1997]). Item 103, p. 154–55.
Used by permission of the author and the Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University