Author Description

If the reader is looking for a complete and thorough biography of Isaac Watts, one that delves into details and specifics, this is the book to read. The comprehensive minutiae will reveal an ample look at Watts’ life and indeed, the time in which he lived. Quoting, “It was a cruel time; the laws were very bitter against the Nonconformists....,” puts the reader right there in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Isaac Watts never married, but he was not without feminine companionship, and content is devoted to the women who were special to him. Biographer Edwin Paxton Hood has packed much information in a book of a little over 300 pages, including views of Dr. Watts on various subjects, such as the afterlife. Not a simple overview type of biography, but one will come away with a feeling that they intimately know the “father of English hymnody,” and his circle of friends, finding them all to be delightful companions.