Ellen Lakshmi Goreh

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Ellen Lakshmi Goreh
Cawnpore
), Uttar Pradesh
Occupation(s)Poet, missionary, nurse, deaconess
'In His Presence'
MIDI version of 1902 setting by Ernest Edwin Mitchell[1]
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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

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

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. S2CID 149085805
    .
  3. ^ "Nehemiah Goreh". The Church Missionary Review. 52: 195. March 1901.
  4. ^ a b 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. ^ a b c d e 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. ^ a b "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

External links

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