She was an author, poet and hymn-writer born in Portsmouth, Hampshire, England, and raised in another small village in the county. Her father was a soap and candle manufacturer and her uncle was an editor of The Gospel Magazine and an evangelist.
Her studies were taken at a school in Southsea that had many French girls for students and she began writing stories and poems from the time she was young. Her poem “The Lesson of the Water-Mill” was published when she was fifteen and this brought her success when it became a song that was popular on both sides of the Atlantic. A further poem, “Pansies”, gave rise to the “Sarah Doudney” pansy being created and named after her.
As an author she wrote many stories and poems for children, especially girls, as well as being a regular contributor to various magazines such as the Churchman’s Shilling Magazine, Girl’s Own Paper, Good Words, Quiver and All the Year Round which was owned and edited by Charles Dicken’s. Under Grey Walls, which was her first novel, was published in 1871 and that same year her collection of hymns, Psalms of Life was also published.
As a hymn-writer she wrote the words to “The Christian’s Good Night”, “For All Thy Care We Bless Thee” and “The Master Hath Come” was written to the tune of the popular Welsh song “The Ash Grove”.
She moved to Oxford after the death of her parents and died there in 1926 in Oxford, England, at the age of 85 having published around 35 novels.
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