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