Ellen Lakshmi Goreh
Ellen Lakshmi Goreh (11 September 1853 – 1937) was an Indian poet, Christian missionary, deaconess, and nurse.
Ellen Lakshmi Goreh | |
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![]() Ellen Lakshmi Goreh, from an undated photograph | |
Born | 11 September 1853 |
Died | 1937 |
Occupation(s) | Poet, missionary, nurse, deaconess |
Early life
Ellen Lakshmi Goreh was born in Varanasi, the daughter of Nilakantha (Nehemiah) Goreh and Lakshmibai Jongalekar. Her father was a Brahmin who converted to Christianity, and an ordained minister.[2] Her mother died in 1853,[3] and the infant Ellen was raised by white Westerners,[4] including indigo planters named Smailes, and then by missionaries, Rev. and Mrs. W. T. Storrs,[5] who called her "Nellie".[6] She was educated in England from ages 12 to 27, including at Home and Colonial College in London.[7]
Career
Encouraged by English evangelist Frances Ridley Havergal,[8][9] Goreh returned to India as a missionary in 1880.[4] Her first published collection, From India's Coral Strand (1883),[10] features poetry with Christian missionary themes, informed by Goreh's experience as an Indian woman among Westerners.[6] For example, "Who Will Go For Us?", in which she implores white Christian women to listen to the real concerns of their oppressed sisters over exotic fictional accounts: "This is no romantic story / Not an idle, empty tale / Not a vain farfetched ideal / No, your sisters' woes are real / Let their pleading tones prevail..."[7] One of her poems became the widely-known hymn "In the Secret of His Presence", with music by American composer George Coles Stebbins; her lyrics explore themes of safety and refuge.[11][12][13]
Goreh taught at a girls' school in Amritsar.[14] She trained as a nurse at Allahabad, and became superintendent of the Bishop Johnson Orphanage from 1892 to 1900. She was ordained as a deaconess in 1897. Goreh's second collection of poems, titled simply Poems (1899), was published in Madras, and reflects "her radically transformed understandings" and "her intricate, multi-faceted identity" as an Indian Christian woman and a transracial adoptee.[6] She wrote a pamphlet, "Evangelistic Work Among Women" (1908).[15] In 1932 she retired from mission work.[6]
Hymns by Goreh
References
- Mitchell, Ernest Edwin (1902), Two sacred songs, Ernest Edwin Mitchell, retrieved 11 June 2022
- Young, Richard Fox (2005). "Enabling Encounters: The Case of Nilakanth Nehemiah Goreh, Brahmin Convert" (PDF). International Bulletin of Missionary Research. 29: 14–20. doi:10.1177/239693930502900104. S2CID 149085805.
- "Nehemiah Goreh". The Church Missionary Review. 52: 195. March 1901.
- Pitman, Emma Raymond (1892). Lady Hymn Writers. T. Nelson and sons. pp. 334–339.
- "Ellen Lakshmi Goreh". The Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology. Archived from the original on 28 March 2020. Retrieved 13 November 2021.
- Cho, Nancy Jiwon (2011). "'Rise, and Take the Gospel Message [...] Far away to India's Daughters': The Bicultural Missionary Poetics of Ellen Lakshmi Goreh (1853-1937), a Victorian-Era Transracial Adoptee" (PDF). Asian Women. 27 (4): 3–31.
- "Ellen Lakshmi Goreh". HymnTime. Archived from the original on 29 September 2020. Retrieved 13 November 2021.
- Bullock, Charles (1883). "Hidden Music". The Day of days, conducted by C. Bullock. pp. 33–35.
- "Some Examples of the Higher Education among the Women of India". Woman's Work for Woman. 6: 97. April 1891.
- Goreh, Ellen Lakshmi (1883). "From India's Coral Strand:" Hymns of Christian Faith. "Home Words" Publishing Office.
- "Gospel Hymn". Expositor and Current Anecdotes. 16: 624. July 1915.
- "What the Intellect of India Reads". Woman's Work. 28: 173. August 1913.
- "In the Secret of His Presence". Herald of Gospel Liberty. 112: 15. 30 December 1920.
- Clark, Robert (1885). The Punjab and Sindh missions of the Church missionary society. Church Missionary Society. pp. 72–73.
- Goreh, Ellen Lakshmi (1908). Evangelistic Work Among Women. Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.
- "The Great Refiner". Hymnary.org. Retrieved 13 November 2021.
- "Over Yonder". Hymnary.org. Retrieved 13 November 2021.
- "Beacon-Light". Hymnary.org. Retrieved 13 November 2021.
- "In the Secret of His Presence". Hymnary.org. Retrieved 13 November 2021.
- Mitchell, Ernest Edwin (1902), Two sacred songs the music composed by Ernest Edwin Mitchell, Ernest Edwin Mitchell, retrieved 9 June 2022
External links
- Nancy Jiwon Cho, The ministry of song : unmarried British women's hymn writing, 1760-1936 (Ph.D. dissertation, Durham University, 2006). Contains a chapter of Goreh
- Ellen Lakshmi Goreh, "Addressed to Frances Ridley Havergall, Author of 'Under the Surface'", a poem by Goreh, published in The Fireside Annual (1877), before Goreh's return to India