Elliott became an invalid around age 30, and remained so for the rest of her life. About her physical condition, Elliott wrote:

My Heavenly Father knows, and He alone, what it is, day after day, and hour after hour, to fight against bodily feelings of almost overpowering weakness and languor and exhaustion, to resolve, as He enables me to do, not to yield to the slothfulness, the depression, the irritability, such as a body causes me to long to indulge, but to rise every morning determined on taking this for my motto, “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me.”

Elliott lived in Brighton, England, and for some 40 years, had an ongoing “spiritual” correspondence with Henri Abraham César Malan. She wrote about 150 hymns. Her works include:

• The Invalid’s Hymn Book, 1834
• Psalms and Hymns for Public, Private, and Social Worship, 1835-48; edited by her brother Henry
• Hours of Sorrow, 1836
• Hymns for a Week, 1839
• Thoughts in Verse on Sacred Subjects, 1869