Bernard Barton

Bernard Barton was born at Carlisle, England, on January 31, 1784, to Quaker parents and was educated at a Friends' school in Ipswich. Apprenticed to a shopkeeper at fourteen, he later entered business at Woodbridge, Suffolk. His wife, Lucy Jesup, died after giving birth to their daughter in 1808. After a brief period as a tutor in Liverpool, Barton returned to Woodbridge in 1810 and spent nearly four decades as a clerk at Alexander's Bank. The combination of ordinary employment and prolific literary work helped establish his public identity as the Quaker Poet.

Barton published numerous volumes, including Metrical Effusions, The Convict's Appeal, Napoleon and Other Poems, Devotional Verses, The Reliquary, and Household Verses. He maintained literary friendships with Charles Lamb and Robert Southey, and Sir Robert Peel later secured him a civil-list pension. Barton and his daughter Lucy jointly published The Reliquary in 1836; it contains the first located printing of Lamp of Our Feet in eleven common-meter stanzas. His other hymns include Walk in the Light and Those Who Live in Love Shall Know. Barton died at Woodbridge on February 19, 1849. Lucy subsequently published selections from his poems and correspondence, preserving both his literary life and the devotional verse from which his hymns entered congregational use.