She was blind from six weeks old and wrote over 8,000 hymns

Frances Jane Crosby was born in 1820 in Putnam County, New York. At six weeks old she developed an eye inflammation. The doctor who treated her applied the wrong remedy. She was permanently blind before she was two months old. The doctor reportedly never recovered from his mistake and left the area. Fanny, by her own account, harboured no resentment toward him.

She began writing poetry at eight. At fifteen she enrolled at the New York Institution for the Blind, where she eventually became a teacher. She was something of a celebrity student: she recited poetry before Congress, met several presidents, and was widely known in New York literary and religious circles.

Her hymn-writing career began seriously in her forties, when she entered a collaborative relationship with composer William Bradbury. She wrote prolifically and quickly: she reportedly composed entire hymns in her head before dictating them, and could produce multiple finished pieces in a single sitting. At one point publishers asked her to use pseudonyms because her name appeared so frequently in hymnals that readers might assume the church had only one writer.

Blessed Assurance, To God Be the Glory, Pass Me Not O Gentle Savior, Rescue the Perishing: these are among the approximately 8,000 hymns attributed to her, though some estimates run higher. Many were written under dozens of pen names at the request of publishers. The full count may never be known.

She lived to 94 and kept writing almost until the end. She gave generously from the modest fees she earned and lived simply. When asked about her blindness she consistently refused to treat it as a tragedy. She said it had concentrated her mind on things that sighted people found easier to overlook. Whether or not she was right about the theology of her situation, the body of work she produced from within it is its own kind of answer.