Jemima Luke

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Jemima Luke (1813–1906) was an English writer who wrote hymns, religious studies, and biographies. She is best known for a popular children's hymn often called “The Old Sweet Story” or “The Story of Old,” with the opening line “I think when I read that sweet story of old.”

Jemima was born Jemima Thompson on 19 August 1813 in Islington, London. Her father, Thomas Thompson, was a wealthy philanthropist who supported missionary work, and her mother was Elizabeth Pinckney. Jemima was taught at home and began writing as a teenager; at thirteen her verses were published in the Juvenile Friend. She studied with Caro­line Fry, a well-known Christian writer.

After her mother died in 1837, Jemima hoped to do missionary work in India. Her father offered to sponsor her, but she became ill and could not go, and he withdrew his support. Jemima stayed in Taunton, Somerset, teaching hymns to children in Blagdon. In 1841, while traveling from Taunton to Wellington, she wrote a hymn on the back of an envelope called “The Child’s Desire.” Her father published it in the Sunday School Teacher’s Magazine, and Jemima later became editor of The Missionary Repository for Children (1841–1845).

The hymn was published anonymously in The Leeds Hymn-book in 1853 as hymn no. 874, which helped it become widely known and connected it to the titles “The Old Sweet Story” or “The Story of Old.” Besides this hymn, Jemima wrote several books, including The Female Jesuit (1851); The Broad Road and the Narrow Way, a Memoir of Eliza Ann Harris of Clifton (1859); Winter Work (1864); Sketches of the Life and Character of Thomas Thompson (1868); and her autobiography The Early Years of My Life (1900).

On 10 May 1843 Jemima married the Reverend Samuel Luke, a Congregationalist minister who later worked in London and Bristol. They had two children, Jemima Elizabeth Luke and Samuel Arnold Luke. The couple moved to Bristol in 1853, where her husband led the Clifton Down Congregational Church. After his death in 1868, Jemima moved to Newport, Isle of Wight, where she was known as a devoted nonconformist and a quiet protester for children’s education.

Jemima Luke died on 2 February 1906 in Newport at the age of 92.