"Lead, Kindly Light, Amid the encircling gloom" is a hymn with words written in 1833 by John Henry Newman as a poem titled "the Pillar of the Cloud", which was first published in the British Magazine in 1834, and republished in Lyra Apostolica in 1836.

In his Apologia Pro Vita Sua, Newman described the writing thus:[2] Before starting from my inn in the morning of May 26th or 27th, I sat down on my bed and began to sob violently.

When the hymn was republished in the 1931 edition of Songs of Praise, it was set to a tune by William Henry Harris entitled Alberta, which he had composed in 1924 on a train crossing Canada.

[3] The theologian David Brown notes that Lux Benigna has been criticised for its Victorian sentimentality, and that Dykes' once-popular tune has fallen out of favour, while Harris's Alberta has gained popularity.

[8] The largest mining disaster in the Durham Coalfield in England was at West Stanley Colliery, known locally as "The Burns Pit", when 168 men and boys lost their lives as the result of two underground explosions at 3:45pm on Tuesday 16 February 1909.

[9] "Lead, Kindly Light" was sung by a soloist, Marion Wright, on the RMS Titanic during a hymn-singing gathering led by the Rev.

[11] On one occasion in February 1915, "Lead, Kindly Light" was sung by a group of British troops to the accompaniment of nearby artillery fire on the Western Front during the First World War at services held before going into the trenches the following day.

[12] Since 1922, the hymn "Lead, Kindly Light" is still sung in the morning of famous SB College Changanassery in Kerala which is said to halt everyone in the region, from their work.

Edward Henry Bickersteth (later Bishop of Exeter) added a fourth 'pirate verse' for the poem's republication in the Hymnal Companion in 1870.

[15] It reads: Newman was not pleased, writing to the publishers: "It is not that the verse is not both in sentiment and language graceful and good, but I think you will at once see how unwilling an author must be to subject himself to the inconvenience of that being ascribed to him which is not his own.