Adelaide Anne Procter (1825–1864)

Adelaide Anne Procter, a favorite poet of Queen Victoria, was a daughter of Bryan Waller Proctor, who wrote poetry under the pseudonym Barry Cornwall. Her literary career began when she was a teenager; her poems were primarily published in Charles Dickens's periodicals Household Words and All the Year Round and later in book form. She also became a philanthropist who worked on behalf of a number of causes, most prominently unemployed women and the homeless. She was actively involved with feminist groups. Her conversion to the Roman Catholic faith appears to have strongly influenced her poetry, which often concerned subjects as homelessness, poverty, and fallen women.
Many of her poems were set to music and made into hymns, and were published in the USA and Germany as well as in England. She wrote the words to "A Lost Chord," set to music by Arthur Sullivan. Miss Procter suffered from ill health and died of tuberculosis at the age of 38.