Lyricist: James Montgomery

From HymnsWithoutWords

Biography

James Montgomery (1771 - 1854) was a British editor and poet.

Son of a pastor and missionary of the Moravian Brethren, born at Irvine in Ayrshire, and educated at the Moravian School at Fulneck, near Pudsey in Leeds. He settled in Sheffield in 1792 as clerk to a newspaper. In 1796 he had become editor of the Sheffield Iris, and was twice imprisoned for political articles for which he was held responsible. In 1797 he published Prison Amusements; but his first work to attract notice was The Wanderer of Switzerland (1806). It was followed by The West Indies (1809), The World before the Flood (1812), Greenland (1819), and The Pelican Island (1828). He is mainly remembered for his hymns.