Hymn Society of Great Britain and Ireland

The Hymn Society of Great Britain and Ireland was founded in 1936 by a group of enthusiasts brought together on the initiative of Dr J.R. Fleming with the aim of ‘encouraging and promoting among interested people intelligent and systematic study of the rich resources of the Church’s praise’. Membership was open to ‘scholars who had already done published work in the field of hymnody’ and also to ‘ordinary members’ with an interest in the subject. From the start a principal task was to up-date John Julian*’s Dictionary of Hymnology (1892, 1907) with the expectation that this would take at least three years. (‘The Society and its aims’, Bulletin of The Hymn Society of Great Britain and...