Indelible Grace Hymnbook

Charlotte Elliott

Born: March 18, 1789, Clap­ham, Sur­rey, Eng­land.

Died: Sep­tem­ber 22, 1871, Bright­on, East Suss­ex, Eng­land.

Buried: St. An­drew’s Church, Hove, Sus­sex, Eng­land.

Charlotte was the grand­daugh­ter of Hen­ry Venn, min­is­ter at Hud­ders­field, and au­thor of The Com­plete Du­ty of a Man, and friend and com­pan­ion of John Wes­ley. Eling, a daugh­ter of Mr. Venn, mar­ried Charles El­liott of Bright­on, and Char­lotte was the third of their six child­ren. Two of her bro­thers be­came cler­gy­men, two of her sis­ters died young, and she lost her fa­ther in 1833. Up­on the death of her mo­ther in 1843, her home was brok­en up, and shor­tly af­ter she and her on­ly sur­viv­ing sis­ter went to the con­ti­nent. Fin­al­ly they set­tled in Tor­quay, Eng­land, and lived there 14 years. Af­ter that she re­turned to Bright­on, which she ne­ver again left ex­cept once for a short time. Char­lotte be­came an in­val­id around age 30, and re­mained so the rest of her life. About her phys­i­cal con­di­tion, El­li­ott wrote:

My Hea­ven­ly Fa­ther knows, and He alone, what it is, day af­ter day, and hour af­ter hour, to fight against bo­di­ly feel­ings of al­most over­pow­er­ing weak­ness and lang­uor and ex­haust­ion, to re­solve, as He en­a­bles me to do, not to yield to the sloth­ful­ness, the de­press­ion, the ir­ri­ta­bil­i­ty, such as a bo­dy caus­es me to long to in­dulge, but to rise ev­ery morn­ing de­term­ined on tak­ing this for my mot­to, If any man will come af­ter me, let him de­ny him­self, take up his cross dai­ly, and fol­low me.

Elliott had an on­go­ing spir­it­u­al cor­res­pond­ence with Hen­ri Ma­lan, and wrote about 150 hymns. Her works in­clude:

The In­va­lid’s Hymn Book, 1834
Psalms and Hymns for Pub­lic, Pri­vate, and So­cial Wor­ship, 1835-48; ed­it­ed by her bro­ther Hen­ry
Hours of Sor­row, 1836
Hymns for a Week, 1839
Thoughts in Verse on Sac­red Sub­jects, 1869

Source: The Cyber Hymnal