Edward Henry Bickersteth
25 January 1825 -
16 May 1906

Family

Edward Henry Bickersteth was the only son of the Rev. Edward Bickersteth and his wife Sarah. His cousins were Edward Bickersteth, Dean of Lichfield, and Robert Bickersteth, Bishop of Ripon. He married Rosa Bignold in 1848, by whom he had sixteen children, including Edward, Bishop of South Tokyo. Three years after Rosa's death, in 1876, he married his cousin Ellen Susanna Bickersteth.

Education

While an undergraduate at Trinity College, Cambridge, he won the Chancellor's Prize for English Poetry in three successive years, 1844, '45, and '46. He graduated with a B.A. in 1847, and proceeded to take his M.A. in 1850. In 1885 he was granted an honorary D.D.

Church Appointments and Service

He was ordained deacon in 1848 and priest in 1849. In 1855 he became vicar of Christ Church, Hampstead, which position he held for thirty years. In January 1855 he was appointed Dean of Gloucester, and three months later he was consecrated Bishop of Exeter. This latter appointment "was probably intended as a counterpoise to the nomination of Edward King to the See of Lincoln." He resigned in 1900, after a serious attack of influenza.

Noteworthy Publications

Bickersteth published several volumes of poems, including Yesterday, To-day, and For Ever: A Poem in Twelve Books (1866), which sold about 75,000 copies in England and America. He was a voluminous writer of hymns, which were published in Psalms and Hymns (1858) and The Hymnal Companion to the Book of Common Prayer (1870). His prose publications include a Practical and Expository Commentary on the New Testament (1864).

Footnote

Edward Henry Bickersteth "remained faithful through life to the earnest evangelical piety of his family." -- DNB 1901-11: 158-59