CROSBY, FANNY

born March 24, 1820, Southeast, N.Y., U.S. died Feb. 12, 1915, Bridgeport, Conn. byname of Frances Jane Crosby, married name Fanny Van Alstyne American writer of hymns, the best known of which was Safe in the Arms of Jesus. Crosby lost her sight to an eye infection and medical ignorance at the age of six weeks. She nonetheless grew up an active and happy child. From 1835 to 1843 she attended the New York Institution for the Blind in New York City. Her inclination to versify was encouraged by a visiting Scottish phrenologist, who examined her and proclaimed her a poet. Thereafter she was the school's chief ornament. She contributed a poetic eulogy on President William Henry Harrison to the New York Herald in 1841 and subsequently published verses in other newspapers. In 1844 she published her first volume, The Blind Girl and Other Poems, and in 1851 her second, Monterey and Other Poems. From 1851 she began writing verses to be set to music.With George F. Root, music instructor at the school, Crosby wrote a successful cantata, The Flower Queen. She also wrote lyrics for scores of songs, some of which, such as Hazel Dell, There's Music in the Air, and Rosalie, the Prairie Flower, were widely popular. After her graduation, Crosby remained at the New York Institution for the Blind as a teacher of English grammar and rhetoric and of ancient history until 1858. That year she married Alexander Van Alstyne, also blind, a former pupil, and then a teacher at the school, and she published her third volume, A Wreath of Columbia's Flowers.About 1864 Crosby began writing hymns. Like her poetry, her hymns suffer generally from clich and sentimentality, but they also display an occasional gleam of more than ordinary talent. In all Crosby wrote between 5,500 and 9,000 hymns, the exact count obscured by the numerous pseudonyms (as many as 200, according to some sources) she employed to preserve her modesty. The best known of her hymns include Safe in the Arms of Jesus, Rescue the Perishing, Blessed Assurance, The Bright Forever, Savior, More Than Life to Me, and Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior. They were especially popular in the Methodist Church, which for a time observed an annual Fanny Crosby Day. Most prominent among her many musical collaborators was Ira D. Sankey. In 1897 she published a final volume of poetry, Bells at Evening and Other Verses, and she later wrote two volumes of autobiography, Fanny Crosby's Life-Story (1903) and Memories of Eighty Years (1906).