Ellen Lakshmi Goreh
A young South Asian woman, hair dressed back beneath a wide fabric band, wearing a high, stiff, white shirt collar under black robes
Ellen Lakshmi Goreh, from an undated photograph
Born11 September 1853
Varanasi (Benares), Uttar Pradesh
Died1937
Kanpur (Cawnpore), Uttar Pradesh
Occupation(s)Poet, missionary, nurse, deaconess

Ellen Lakshmi Goreh (11 September 1853 – 1937) was an Indian poet, Christian missionary, deaconess, and nurse.

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

  • "The Great Refiner"[16]
  • "No Disappointment Yonder" (also titled "Over Yonder")[17]
  • "Lo, the Darkness Gathers Round Us" (also titled "Beacon-Light")[18]
  • "In the Secret of his Presence"[19] The lyrics were treated to a musical setting by Australian composer Ernest Edwin Mitchell[20]

Personal life

Goreh died in 1937, in her eighties, at St. Catherine's Hospital in Kanpur.[6]

References

  1. ↑ Mitchell, Ernest Edwin (1902), Two sacred songs, Ernest Edwin Mitchell, retrieved 11 June 2022
  2. ↑ 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.
  3. ↑ "Nehemiah Goreh". The Church Missionary Review. 52: 195. March 1901.
  4. 1 2 Pitman, Emma Raymond (1892). Lady Hymn Writers. T. Nelson and sons. pp. 334–339.
  5. ↑ "Ellen Lakshmi Goreh". The Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology. Archived from the original on 28 March 2020. Retrieved 13 November 2021.
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 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.
  7. 1 2 "Ellen Lakshmi Goreh". HymnTime. Archived from the original on 29 September 2020. Retrieved 13 November 2021.
  8. ↑ Bullock, Charles (1883). "Hidden Music". The Day of days, conducted by C. Bullock. pp. 33–35.
  9. ↑ "Some Examples of the Higher Education among the Women of India". Woman's Work for Woman. 6: 97. April 1891.
  10. ↑ Goreh, Ellen Lakshmi (1883). "From India's Coral Strand:" Hymns of Christian Faith. "Home Words" Publishing Office.
  11. ↑ "Gospel Hymn". Expositor and Current Anecdotes. 16: 624. July 1915.
  12. ↑ "What the Intellect of India Reads". Woman's Work. 28: 173. August 1913.
  13. ↑ "In the Secret of His Presence". Herald of Gospel Liberty. 112: 15. 30 December 1920.
  14. ↑ Clark, Robert (1885). The Punjab and Sindh missions of the Church missionary society. Church Missionary Society. pp. 72–73.
  15. ↑ Goreh, Ellen Lakshmi (1908). Evangelistic Work Among Women. Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.
  16. ↑ "The Great Refiner". Hymnary.org. Retrieved 13 November 2021.
  17. ↑ "Over Yonder". Hymnary.org. Retrieved 13 November 2021.
  18. ↑ "Beacon-Light". Hymnary.org. Retrieved 13 November 2021.
  19. ↑ "In the Secret of His Presence". Hymnary.org. Retrieved 13 November 2021.
  20. ↑ Mitchell, Ernest Edwin (1902), Two sacred songs the music composed by Ernest Edwin Mitchell, Ernest Edwin Mitchell, retrieved 9 June 2022
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