Melissa Meyer recommends
Susie: The Life and Legacy of Susannah Spurgeon, wife of Charles H. Spurgeon
“While many Christians recognize the name of Charles H. Spurgeon, the beloved preacher and writer, few are familiar with the life and legacy of his wife, Susie,” says Ray Rhodes Jr., author of Susie: The Life and Legacy of Susannah Spurgeon, wife of Charles H. Spurgeon (Moody Publishers). But “she was a remarkable woman in her own right.”
In this enchanting biography, read about Susie’s life, from her birth in London in 1832—“not far from where a number of religious dissenters were accused of treason and hanged”—to her death in 1903.
“Not only was Susie a Victorian chronologically, she was also one culturally,” Ray writes. “Like many upper middle class young ladies, Susie was well read and expertly versed in literature, music, art, and language.”
Susie’s early life was quite different than Charles’s, whose “early years were steeped in rural culture with its green pastures, dirt roads, and small villages.”
The two married in 1856. “There are few love stories so tender, so sweet, and so instructive as that of Charles and Susie Spurgeon,” Ray says. But read how their cultural and societal differences had left Susie unimpressed by Charles when she first heard him speak during a worship service in 1853. Much later in life, she called her initial reaction foolish.
Read, too, about the trials and blessings of their marriage: Charles’s bouts with depression, the trampling deaths and injuries of people attending a packed worship service, the long separations of the Spurgeon family while Charles traveled, Susie’s painful health struggles, and on a lighter note, Susie’s discovery of a spider in her tea (after she had nearly drunk the entire contents!), but the birth of their children and grandchildren, the family’s serene home and resourceful property, delightful travels as a couple, and Susie’s thoughts about the beauty of creation.
Susie—”a warm, charming, and fascinating woman,” Ray says—was a steady source of encouragement and support to Charles while she maintained her own ministries. Just a few of those ministries were mailing books to pastors, sending clothes and money to poor pastors’ families, and writing five books.
Susie Spurgeon was indeed “a remarkable woman in her own right.”
Melissa Meyer is managing editor of The Baptist Bulletin. Purchase your own copy of Susie.
