CHARLOTTE ELLIOTT, THE GREATEST WRITER OF HYMNS

Today, The Grandma has received the visit of Jordi Santanyí, one of her closest friends. They love Literature, and they have been talking about Charlotte Elliott, the English poet, mainly famous by her hymns, who was born on a day like today in 1789.

Charlotte Elliott (18 March 1789-22 September 1871) was an English poet, hymn writer, and editor. She is best known by two hymns, Just As I Am and Thy will be done.

Elliott edited Christian Remembrancer Pocket Book (1834–59) and The Invalid's Hymn book, 6th edition, 1854. To this latter collection, she contributed 112 hymns including Just As I Am, without one plea, a hymn dated 1836, which was translated into almost every living language of the day.

In spite of being raised in a Christian home, she reflected on her conflicts and doubts and was unsure of her relationship with Christ. So she penned her words of assurance about Jesus loving her just as she was. William B. Bradbury composed music for her lyrics and published the song in 1849. The hymn was translated into many languages, with tens of thousands of people committing their lives to Christ during the playing of it.

She also wrote My God and Father while I stray, 1834, in the same collection. Elliott was the author of Hymns for a week, 1837, 40th thousand, 1871; Hours of Sorrow, 1836 and many later editions, Poems by C. E., 1863. An invalid for many years, her life was filled with deeds of beneficence. She shrank from everything ostentatious, nearly all her books having been issued anonymously.

More information: Hymnology Archive

Elliott was born on 18 March 1789 at Westfield Lodge, Brighton. Her maternal grandfather, Rev. Henry Venn of the Clapham Sect, of Huddersfield and Yelling, England, was a divine. He wrote The Complete Duty of Man (1763), and was one of that band of ministers, whose labours and writings brought about and promoted The Great Awakening of the 18th century, among the churches of Great Britain.

Elliott's childhood was passed in a circle of great refinement and piety. She was continuously told by different pastors at the many churches that she visited to pray more, study the Bible more and to perform more noble deeds.

Elliott spent the first 32 years of her life in Clapham. As a young woman, she was gifted as a portrait artist and a writer of humorous verse.

Elliott's health was improved by a visit to Normandy. But in 1829 she once more became an almost helpless sufferer, with only occasional intervals of relief.

In 1833, her father died. She undertook in 1834 the editorial supervision of The Christian Remembrancer Pocket Book, an Annual, and in 1836 of the Invalid's Hymn Book -works previously conducted by a friend, Miss Harriet Kiernan, who was then in the last stages of consumption. The annual she edited for 25 years and many of her poems appeared in it. To the edition of the Invalid's Hymn Book that she enlarged and edited anonymously in 1836 she contributed 115 hymns, among them the noted Just as I am, without one plea.

More information: All Poetry

She contributed several hymns also in 1835 to a selection of Psalms and Hymns by her brother, Rev. Henry V. Elliott. She also published, in 1836, Hours of Sorrow Cheered and Comforted. Her Morning and Evening Hymns for a Week, was printed privately in 1837, and published in 1842.

Elliott was a member of the Church of England. In later years, when she was not able to attend public worship, she wrote, My Bible is my church. It is always open, and there is my High Priest ever waiting to receive me. There I have my confessional, my thanksgiving, my psalm of praise, and a congregation of whom the world is not worthy -prophets, and apostles, and martyrs, and confessors; in short, all I can want I find there.

A volume of Poems appeared in 1863, and her brother Henry died in that year. Once only, in 1867, did she venture again from home, spending a few weeks in a neighbouring village. In 1869, she fell seriously ill but managed to recover.

She died at 10 Norfolk Terrace, Brighton, on 22 September 1871, and was buried alongside her brothers in the churchyard of St Andrew's, Hove.

Elliott was a distant relative of Virginia Woolf.

More information: Archive

Is life's evening long and dreary?
Gone the treasures once possessed?
Is thy spirit faint and weary?
Does thou long to be at rest?
On this sweet promise fix thy sight:
'At evening time it shall be light.'

Charlotte Elliott