Phillips Brooks was born on December 13, 1835, in Boston, Massachusetts. The city that witnessed his birth would also be the place where his life ended, giving his biography a particular geographic coherence. He was a citizen of the United States throughout his life, and he worked in the English language across the several vocations he pursued.

After receiving his education at Harvard University, Brooks built a career that brought together religious and creative work. He served as an Anglican priest and eventually as a bishop, and alongside those roles he worked as a theologian and a writer. His output extended into more lyrical territory as well: he was a hymnwriter and a librettist, putting words to devotional and musical purposes that complemented his theological writing. These roles were not separate tracks so much as different expressions of a sustained engagement with religious life conducted in English.

The combination of bishop, theologian, writer, hymnwriter, and librettist meant that Brooks worked across both institutional and creative registers. His theological writing gave formal shape to his religious thinking, while his hymns and libretti gave that thinking a more musical and poetic outlet. As a writer more broadly, he produced work in English that touched on the concerns his various roles brought to the surface. The breadth of his output reflects the range of vocations the facts record against his name.

Brooks died on January 23, 1893, in Boston — the same city where he had been born nearly fifty-eight years earlier. The Library of Congress records him under the authorized form "Brooks, Phillips, 1835–1893," a label that marks the span of a life spent as an Anglican priest, bishop, theologian, writer, hymnwriter, and librettist in the United States. His birth and death in Boston bracket a career whose documentary record includes Harvard, the Anglican episcopate, and a body of written and musical work.