Henry Martyn

Henry Martyn (1781-1812) was an Anglican priest and missionary to the peoples of India and Persia. Born in Truro, Cornwall, he attended St John’s College, Cambridge and after being ordained a priest in the Church of England he became a chaplain for the British East India Company. He arrived in India in April 1806 where he preached and studied linguistics, later translating the whole of the New Testament into Urdu, Persian and Judaeo-Persic. He also translated the Pslams into Persian and the Book of Common Prayer into Urdu. From India, he set out for Bushire, Shiraz, Isfahan, and then on to Tabriz where he had hoped to present his translation of the New Testament to the Shah. On his return journey to England in 1812 he was seized with fever, and unable to continue further was forced to stop in Tokat, although the plague was raging there. He wrote his final diary entry on October 6, 1812 and died ten days later. Martyn is remembered for his courage, selflessness, and religious devotion. His love for Lydia Grenfell, who he had hoped would join him in India as his wife, is well-documented in his diary and surviving letters to her, which are quoted in George Smith’s lengthy biography, first published in 1892, as are extracts from Lydia’s own diary. The biography makes extensive use of Martyn’s papers and private letters, now held at Westminster College, Cambridge, and draws on reminiscences of his associates. Smith was a Scottish historian and geographer who spent his working life in India, moving to Calcutta in 1855 where he became successively Fellow of the University and their Examiner, editor of the Calcutta Review, and from 1860 official India correspondent for the Times newspaper in Britain. By the 1870s he had returned to Scotland where he was editor of the journal Friends of India, Secretary of the United Free Church of Scotland, and Vice President of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society. Smith was the author of several biographies of religious figures and missionaries to India, and also books on Indian politics and geography. 3