Introduction

Biography

Charlotte was the daugh­ter of so­li­ci­tor Hen­ry Al­ing­ton Pye & Char­lotte Yer­burgh.

She be­came one of the most suc­cess­ful and pro­lif­ic bal­lad com­pos­ers of the 19th Cen­tu­ry. Af­ter at­tend­ing a Vo­cal and Mis­cel­lan­eous En­ter­tain­ment at the Man­sion House in Louth in 1838, she de­clared she would be­come a po­et and writ­er.

And, a lit­tle ov­er a year lat­er, when her fa­ther, the War­den of Louth, Lin­coln­shire, car­ried out the old cus­tom of dis­trib­ut­ing cloth to poor wo­men, Char­lotte wrote a 20-verse po­em to com­me­mo­rate the oc­ca­sion. By 1847, she was well enough known that when the new rail­way sta­tion was built at Louth, she was asked to lay the cor­ner­stone.

Charlotte mar­ried Charles Bar­nard in 1854, and they lived at the Firs in West­gate, though Charles was par­son of St. Ola­ve’s in Ruck­land.

Following Char­lotte’s pre­sen­ta­tion at court in 1856, the cou­ple moved to Pim­li­co in Lon­don. Among their neigh­bors was Mi­chael Cos­ta, con­duc­tor at Co­vent Gar­den, where Char­lotte oft­en at­tend­ed.

Charlotte’s first pub­lished song was a mu­sic­al set­ting of The Brook, by Ten­ny­son. Her oth­er po­pu­lar se­cu­lar works inc­lude The Blue Al­sa­tian Mount­ains.