John Kelly

John Kelly was an English Presbyterian minister, editor, and translator born at Newcastle upon Tyne in 1833. He studied at the University of Glasgow, at Bonn, at New College in Edinburgh, and at the Theological College of the English Presbyterian Church in London. He served congregations at Hebburn-on-Tyne and Streatham and later worked as Tract Editor for the Religious Tract Society.

Kelly's principal contribution to hymnody was Paul Gerhardt's Spiritual Songs, published in London by Alexander Strahan in 1867. Kelly stated that the hymns included there were given in full and translated in the meters of the German originals. His rendering of Auf, auf, mein Herz, mit Freuden begins Up! Up! My Heart with Gladness. The now-familiar opening Awake, My Heart, with Gladness represents a later alteration of Kelly's translation rather than his exact first line.

Kelly also published Hymns of the Present Century from the German in 1886. His translations helped English-speaking Lutherans and other Protestants gain access to a large body of German devotional hymnody while retaining the metrical structures needed for historic chorale tunes.