Elizabeth Charles

Elizabeth Rundle Charles (2 January 1828 – 28 March 1896) was an English writer.

Life
She was born at Tavistock, Devon, the daughter of John Rundle, MP. Some of her youthful poems won the praise of Tennyson, who read them in manuscript. In 1851 she married Andrew Paton Charles. She was affiliated with the Anglican Church, and died at Hampstead, London, in 1896.

Her best known book, written to order for an editor who wished for a story about Martin Luther, The Chronicles of the Schönberg-Cotta Family, was published in 1862, and was translated into most of the European languages, into Arabic, and into many Indian dialects. Mrs Charles wrote in all over fifty books, the majority of a semi-religious character, as well as writing and translating a number of hymns. She took an active part in the work of various charitable institutions, and among her friends and correspondents were Dean Stanley, Archbishop Tait, Charles Kingsley, William Booth, Jowett and Pusey.

Publications

 * The Voice of Christian Life in Song; or, Hymns and Hymn-writers of Many Lands and Ages (1859)
 * The Three Wakings, and Other Poems (1859)
 * Wanderings over Bible lands and seas (1862)
 * The Early Dawn (1864)
 * Winifred Bertram and the World She Lived In (1866)
 * Poems (1867)
 * The Draytons and the Davenants (1869)
 * Songs Old and New (1882)
 * Conquering and to Conquer/The Diary of Brother Bartholomew.
 * Our Seven Homes (1896) is autobiographical.

Hymns

 * Around a Table, Not a Tomb
 * Come and Rejoice with Me
 * Is Thy Cruse of Comfort Wasting?
 * Jesus, What Once Thou Wast
 * Never Further Than Thy Cross
 * Praise Ye the Triune God
 * What Marks the Dawning of the Year?

A number of her hymns appeared in The Family Treasury, edited by William Arnot (1808-1875).

Translations of Hymns

 * Dost Thou in a Manger Lie?
 * Lo, the Day, the Day of Life!
 * The Morning Kindles All the Sky
 * A Lamb Goes Uncomplaining Forth (Original: Paul Gerhardt, German)