author
Henry Alford
1810–1871
Best remembered as the Victorian churchman who wrote the enduring harvest hymn "Come, Ye Thankful People, Come," he was also a lively scholar with wide interests. His work ranged from biblical criticism and preaching to poetry, travel writing, and editing the Greek New Testament.
2 Audiobooks
About the author
Born in London in 1810, this English churchman and writer studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he later became a fellow. He went on to serve in the Church of England and eventually became Dean of Canterbury, while building a reputation as a theologian, textual critic, poet, hymnodist, and man of letters.
He is especially associated with his multivolume edition of the Greek New Testament and with the hymn "Come, Ye Thankful People, Come," which helped secure his place in popular memory as well as in church history. Contemporary and later accounts also describe him as remarkably versatile, with interests that reached beyond theology into literature and other arts.
Alford died in 1871, but his name still turns up wherever Victorian biblical scholarship, Anglican hymnody, and nineteenth-century religious writing are discussed. For listeners coming to his work today, he offers the mix of serious learning and approachable literary energy that made him a distinctive figure in his own time.