Hymn Writers of the Church

Charles, Elizabeth Rundle, the daughter of John Rundle, a banker and member of Parliament, was born at Tavistock, Devonshire, England, January 2, 1828. In 1851 she was married to Andrew Paton Charles, a barrister at law, who died in 1868. For some years previous to her death (March 28, 1896) she signed her name "Rundle-Charles." She is described in Allibone's Dictionary of Authors as one who had reputation as a linguist, painter, musician, poet, and preëminently as the author of The Chronicles of the Schönberg-Cotta Family, 1863, and more than twenty-five other volumes, several of which were poetry. No books written in the past century designed to popularize the notable epochs in modern Church history have had a wider reading or a greater and more healthful influence than The Schönberg-Cotta Family and the series of historic volumes that followed it. Among her many volumes discussing poetry and containing poems from her pen, none has attained such widespread recognition and influence as The Voice of Christian Life in Song in Many Lands and Ages, 1865. Her Poems were published in New York in 1867. Many of her works have had an immense circulation in England and America. Before her death she had won a high and permanent place in English literature as one of the purest and most wholesome of modern Christian authors. Some half dozen of her hymns are found in the hymnals of different Churches.