James Montgomery

James Montgomery (1771-1854) was a Moravian poet and newspaper editor. He was born in Irvine, Ayrshire, Ireland, where his father came under the influence of the Moravians. The family returned to Scotland (their original home) not long after James’s birth. He was educated at a Moravian school in Leeds. His parents went to Barbados as Moravian missionaries in 1783, and they died there, without ever seeing James again. He wrote numerous poems before he was fifteen, but at sixteen was apprenticed to a baker. In 1792 he began working as a clerk and bookkeeper for the Sheffield Register, under the radical publisher Joseph Gales. When Gales fled to America, the newspaper folded, but in 1794 Montgomery launched the Sheffield Iris, a bit less radical than Gales’ paper. By 1795 Montgomery was the sole owner. Montgomery was nevertheless radical enough to be put in jail at York in 1795 and 1796 for seditious practices in publishing poems thought too political by the authorities. He prospered nevertheless and lived in relative ease, selling the newspaper in 1825, but remaining in Sheffield and continuing to writer. He was the founder of the Sheffield Literary and Philosophical Society. He worshiped in Methodist, Baptist, and, at times, Anglican chapels, his faith remaining firm, joining the Moravians once again in 1814. Known mostly for his poetry, including his hymns, his writings of note began with The Wanderer of Switzerland and other Poems (1806), though hated by Jeffrey and the Edinburgh Review. He was a regular contributor to the Eclectic Review, and delivered a series of lectures on poetry at the Royal Institution in 1833. As a hymn writer, he sits easily with Watts and Wesley. His The Christian Psalmist (1825), a collection of hymns by many writers, contains an introduction on hymn composition worth noting (look at this). Possibly his most famous hymn, ‘Angels from the Realms of Glory’.