Anna Letitia Waring was born at Plas-y-Velin, Neath, on April 19, 1823. She left her parents' faith, the Society of Friends, for Anglicanism, into which she was baptised on May 15, 1842. Her life-long avocations were the study of the Bible (in self-taught Hebrew), the writing of hymns, a love of animals, and charitable work for prisoners. Her Hymns and Meditations (1850) reached its 17th edition in 1896 and was popularized by the SPCK in the next century. Waring never married. She died in Clifton, Bristol, on May 10, 1910.

• Scott, Rosemary. "Waring, Anna Letitia (1823–1910)." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Online ed. Ed. Lawrence Goldman. Oxford: OUP, 2004.
• Waring, A. L. Hymns and Meditations. New edn. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1911. 04430.a.1 British Library