Steele's first publication in 1757:— "1757, Nov. 29. This day Nanny sent a part of her compositions to London to be printed." Again: "Her brother brought with him her poetry, not yet bound." Steele's stepmother, the second Mrs. Steele, shared the father's admiration, but they were anxious that any public expression of Steele's abilities as a writer should not injure her character. They prayed that she would remain humble. It was not till she was 44 that she consented to the publication of her hymns, that they might be available for public use. In 1760, she published Poems on Subjects Chiefly Devotional under the name Theodosia. This book had a second edition (3 vols. Bristol, 1780), for which Caleb Evans wrote a preface. Her complete works were published in one volume by Daniel Sedgwick (London, 1863), as Hymns, Psalms, and Poems by Anne Steele, with a memoir by John Sheppard. It comprised 144 hymns, thirty-four metrical psalms and fifty moral poems. Some of them, e.g. "Father of mercies, in Thy word," have found their way into the collections of other churches. She has been called the Frances Ridley Havergal of the 18th-century. Several of Anne Steele's hymns appear in the Sacred Harp. In 1780, a new edition of the Poems, comprising a third and posthumous volume of Miscellanies, was published by Dr. Caleb Evans, the profits of which were to be given to the "Bristol Education Society", also known as the Baptist College of Bristol, of which he was at that time President; to that volume, the Editor prefixed a biography of "Mrs. Steele", as she was more commonly called. A Selection of Hymns for Public Worship, a hymn book compiled by William Gadsby and first published in 1814, includes twenty-seven of the hymns by Anne Steele. This book is used mainly by some of the Calvinistic Strict Baptist churches in England. Steele, like the Welsh poet, William Williams Pantycelyn, wrote missionary hymns before modern missionary and Bible societies were established. She also wrote a well-known Sunday school hymn before Sunday schools were established. Personal life It has often been written that the drowning of her betrothed, Robert Elscourt, a few hours before the time fixed for her marriage, deeply affected an otherwise quiet life. However, modern research refutes the details of this story. One man did ask for the hand of Anne Steele, in 1742. This was Benjamin Beddome,