Elizabeth Payson Prentiss

Elizabeth Payson Prentiss was an American Presbyterian author, educator, poet, and hymn writer whose devotional writing became widely read in nineteenth-century Protestantism. Born in Portland, Maine, on October 26, 1818, she was a daughter of Congregational minister Edward Payson. After his death in 1827, the family later moved to New York. Hymnary's biographical record notes that she joined Bleecker Street Presbyterian Church as a young woman, wrote for religious periodicals, opened a small school for girls, and later taught at a girls' boarding school in Richmond, Virginia.

In 1845 she married George Lewis Prentiss, a Presbyterian minister. His pastorates took the family to New Bedford and then New York City, where he served Mercer Street Presbyterian Church and later Union Theological Seminary. The couple endured the deaths of two young children in 1852, and Elizabeth also lived with recurring ill health. These experiences became part of the emotional and spiritual world reflected in her letters, fiction, poetry, and devotional writing.

Prentiss published children's stories, religious poems, and novels. Her best-known prose work, Stepping Heavenward, appeared in 1869 after serialization and became an influential devotional novel. Other writings included The Flower of the Family, Religious Poems, and numerous shorter pieces. Her husband later edited The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss from her journals and correspondence, publishing it in 1882.

Among her hymns, More Love to Thee, O Christ became by far the most widely transmitted. It reflects her characteristic emphasis on love for Christ, sanctification, surrender, and perseverance. Prentiss died at Dorset, Vermont, on August 13, 1878.