FABER, FREDERICK WILLIAM (1814-1863), British hymn-writer and theologian, was born on June 28, 1814 at Calverley, Yorkshire. Educated at Harrow and at Balliol college, Oxford, he was elected fellow of University college in 1837. Meanwhile he had given up Calvinistic views, and had become an enthusiastic follower of John Henry Newman. In 1843, he became rector of Elton in Huntingdonshire, but after a prolonged mental struggle joined the Roman Catholic communion in Nov. 1845. He founded a religious community at Birmingham, called Wilfridians, which was ultimately merged in the oratory of St. Philip Neri, with Newman as Superior. In 1849 a branch of the oratory was established in London, first in King William street, and afterwards at Brompton, over which Faber presided till his death on Sept. 26, 1863. It is mainly as a hymn-writer that Faber is remembered. His other works include Lives of Modern Saints (1847 sq.) ; The Blessed Sacrament (1855) ; The Creator and the Creature (1858) ; Growth of Holiness (1854) ; Spiritual Conferences (1859) ; The Foot of the Cross (8 vols., 1853-6o) ; and Notes on Doctrinal Subjects, 2 vols. (1866) .
See J. E. Bowden, Life and Letters of Fr. Faber (2nd ed. 1888), and A Brief Sketch of the Early Life of the late F. W. Faber, D.D., by his brother the Rev. F. A. Faber (1869) .