Frances Ridley Havergal

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FRH was a late Victorian religious poet, children's author, and hymn-writer. Her publications during her lifetime were sporadic, but a flood of her works reached print after her death. She composed more than seventy hymns, some of which are still loved and sung, and more than twenty books on various religious matters.
  • BirthName: Frances Ridley Havergal
    She wrote a poem about her own name, in which she derives the Ridley from Nicholas Ridley , Protestant martyr, who was burned to death at Oxford on 21 March 1556, as much as from her godfather William Ridley .
    Malcolm, Edward J. “Frances Ridley Havergal—A Sweet Singer: Her Words and Her Witness”. The Church of England (Continuing): Articles.

  • Nicknames: Fannie; Little Quicksilver
    Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.
    “Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
    199
    Havergal, Frances Ridley. Letters by the Late Frances Ridley Havergal. Editor Havergal, Maria Vernon Graham, Anson D. F. Randolph.
    10

  • Pseudonyms: F. R. H.; Sabrina
    The Dictionary of Literary Biography gives this as Sabina.
    ; Zoide

Milestones

14 December 1836

FRH was born at Astley in Worcestershire, the youngest of a family in which she had three sisters and two brothers.
Chappell, Jennie. Women Who Have Worked and Won. Pickering and Inglis, 1928.
93

After January 1869

FRH 's first collection of hymns and poetry, The Ministry of Song, appeared in print; she had been ten years in preparing it.
Janet Grierson discusses the work's publication in 1869 but lists it as appearing in 1871. The second edition did appear in 1871; it seems that the first was undated.
Grierson, Janet. Frances Ridley Havergal: Worchestershire Hymnwriter. Havergal Society, 1979.
5, 97
Havergal, Frances Ridley. Letters by the Late Frances Ridley Havergal. Editor Havergal, Maria Vernon Graham, Anson D. F. Randolph.
prelims

3 June 1879

FRH died of hepatitis and peritonitis at Caswell Bay near The Mumbles, Swansea, Glamorgan, Wales.
Enock, Esther E. Frances Ridley Havergal. Pickering and Inglis, 1928.
56
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

Biography

Birth and Family

14 December 1836

FRH was born at Astley in Worcestershire, the youngest of a family in which she had three sisters and two brothers.
Chappell, Jennie. Women Who Have Worked and Won. Pickering and Inglis, 1928.
93