Horatio Bolton Nelson

Horatio Bolton Nelson was born at Burnham, Norfolk, on August 7, 1823. His surname was originally Bolton. In February 1835 it was changed to Nelson when his father inherited the family titles; after his father's death that November, the twelve-year-old Horatio became the third Earl Nelson. He was educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, and pursued his hymnological work as an Anglican layman rather than as an ordained minister.

With assistance from John Keble, Nelson edited the Salisbury Hymn-Book in 1857 for use in the Diocese of Salisbury. The collection sold widely and was later recast as The Sarum Hymnal in 1868, with help from James Russell Woodford and Edward Arthur Dayman. Nelson also published Hymns for Saint's Days, and Other Hymns in 1864. That collection introduced his adaptation of the text now known as As the Sun Doth Daily Rise.

Nelson's contribution belongs to a broader Victorian Anglican effort to recover, translate, and reshape historic Christian song for contemporary worship. His other enduring work includes From All Thy Saints in Warfare. In this record he is credited as adapter, not as author of the anonymous Latin source and not as composer of INNOCENTS. He died on February 25, 1913.