This biography of Henry Martyn, the linguist, scholar and missionary to India and Persia in the 19th century, presents the facts of his life as objectively as possible. The text draws on Henry's journals and letters as well as the work of contemporary biographers.

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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.

"[...]for him would be promoted by his going forth to preach to the heathen. He considered their pitiable and perilous condition; he thought on the value of their immortal souls; he remembered the last solemn injunction of his Lord, "Go teach all nations,"—an injunction never revoked, and commensurate with that most encouraging promise, "Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world." Actuated by these motives, he offered himself as a missionary to the society for Missions, and from that time stood prepared with childlike simplicity and unshaken[...]".

Excerpt from Life of Henry Martyn: Missionary to India and Persia, 1781 to 1812 I hold in my hand an album adorned with pictures of missionaries, my brethren and sisters, the ambassadors of the King. On one of the first pages is "the tomb of Henry Martyn," given me by Dr. Van Lennep, who had just visited the sacred spot and described it vividly. When I turn the pages of my album and come to this, I pause with reverence and the overflowings of deep and tender emotion, and my mind adds other pictures, both terrestrial and celestial, to the one upon the page. My own missionary life as the companion of him whom Dr. Perkins called "the later Henry Martyn," was spent in Henry Martyn's Persia. They were alike I think in many things, these two Persian evangelists, and also in their deaths. When they passed out of the Tabriz gate, journeying homeward after a course of illness in the fated city, for each it was a quick ascent, a painful translation, to the heavenly city with abundant entrance and the Master's "well done" - in heaven; and on earth, a foreign grave taking possession for Christ, as the Nestorians reverently say, with "white stones still speaking out." About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.