Sarah Flower Adams

Sarah Flower Adams, India ink drawing from 1834, washed with lime

Sarah Flower Adams (born February 22, 1805 in Harlow , Essex , † August 14, 1848 in London ) was an English poet .

Life

Her father was the journalist and editor of The Cambridge Intelligencer and The Political Review , Benjamin Flower (1755-1829), her mother Eliza Gould (1770-1819); the two married in 1800. The first daughter from this marriage, Eliza , was born in 1803 and died in 1846. The social interaction in her parents' house included a. Samuel Taylor Coleridge , Robert Browning and Percy Bysshe Shelley . In keeping with the literary atmosphere of her parents' house, Sarah turned to acting and writing (her appearance as Lady Macbeth in 1837 is attested ).

After her father's death, she and her sister moved to London, where a friend of her father's, William Johnson Fox , headed the Unitarian Church (South Place Unitarian Church, Finsbury, London), which was then a meeting place for reformist intellectuals. Here she met the publicist and engineer William Bridges Adams , whom she married in 1834.

In addition, she devoted herself to writing; she contributed 14 poems to William Johnson Fox's Hymns and Anthems (London 1841), including Nearer, my God, to Thee , which in the second half of the century was extended to a sixth stanza by Edward Henry Bickersteth Jr. expanded and underlaid with the melody "Horbury" by John Bacchus Dykes or "Bethany" by the American Lowell Mason , which was to become one of the most popular songs at funerals in the English-speaking world and has seen numerous other settings and adaptations in other languages. The later interest in her person is essentially linked to this one poem.

Her poems are in an exalted late romantic style that was fashionable at the time, which contemporaries ridiculed as "spasmodic" and which was already forgotten shortly after the middle of the 19th century.

Works

A complete list of her writings, especially her articles in journals, does not exist.

drama

• Vivia Perpetua. A dramatic poem in five acts (London 1841)

Poems

• A Summer Recollection (1836)
• To my sister

Religious poems

In WJ Fox: Hymns and Anthems , London 1841.

• Creator Spirit! Thou the first
• Darkness Shrouded Calvary
• Gently Fall the Dews of Eve
• Go, and Watch the Autumn Leaves
• He Sendeth Sun, He Sendeth Shower
• Nearer, My God, to Thee
• O Hallowed Memories of the Past
• O human heart! Thou hast a song
• OI Would Sing a Song of Praise
• O love! Thou Makest All Things Even
• Part in Peace: Is Day Before Us?
• Sing to the Lord! For His Mercies are sure
• The Mourners Came at Break of Day
• The World May Change from Old to New

Catechism for children

• The Flock at the Fountain (London 1845)

Collections

• Sarah Flower Adams: Selections. Ed. by R. Garnet. 1892.
• Sarah Flower Adams: Vivia Perpetua. A dramatic poem in five acts. With a memoir of the author [by EF Bridell-Fox], and her hymns. Private print, London 1893.
• Sarah Flower Adams: A memoir and her hymns, so The flock at the fountain (a catechism for children). Christian Life Publishing, London 1894.

literature

• Moncure Daniel Conway: Centenary History of the South Place Society. Based on four discourses given in the chapel in May and June, 1893. Williams & Norgate , London / Edinburgh 1894.
• Harold William Stephenson: The Author of Nearer, my God to Thee - Sarah Flower Adams. Lindsey Press, London 1922.
• Stephen Hulcoop: Memoirs of the family of Benjamin Flower of Harlow. Compiled from various sources including a transcript of the hymn “Nearer my God to Thee” by Sarah Flower Adams. SH Publishing, Harlow 2003.