Elizabeth Charles

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Elizabeth Rundle Charles (2 January 1828 - 28 March 1896) was an English writer.

She was born at Tavistock, the daughter of John Rundle, Member of Parliament. Some of her youthful poems won the praise of Tennyson, who read them in manuscript. In 1851 she married Andrew Paton Charles. Elizabeth Charles wrote over fifty books, as well as writing and translating a number of hymns. She was affiliated with the Anglican Church, and died at Hampstead, London, England on March 28, 1896.

Her best known book, written to order for an editor who wished for a story about Martin Luther, The Chronicles of the Schonberg-Cotta Family, was published in 1862, and was translated into most of the European languages, into Arabic, and into many Indian dialects. Mrs Charles wrote in all some fifty books, the majority of a semi-religious character. She took an active part in the work of various charitable institutions, and among her friends and correspondents were Dean Stanley, Archbishop Tait, Charles Kingsley, Jowett and Pusey.

Her works include The Voice of Christian Life in Song; or, Hymns and Hymn-writers of Many Lands and Ages (1859), The Three Wakings, and Other Poems (1859), Wanderings over Bible Lands and Seas (1862), Winifred Bertram and the World She Lived In (1866), Poems (1867), The Draytons and the Davenants (1869), Songs Old and New (1882), and Conquering and to Conquer/The Diary of Brother Bartholomew . A number of Charles' hymns appeared in The Family Treasury, edited by William Arnot (1808-1875).

She died at Hampstead.