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.[1] Her mother died in 1853,[2] and the infant Ellen was raised by white Westerners,[3] including indigo planters named Smailes, and then by missionaries, Rev. and Mrs. W. T. Storrs,[4] who called her "Nellie".[5] She was educated in England from ages 12 to 27, including at Home and Colonial College in London.[6]
Career
Encouraged by English evangelist Frances Ridley Havergal,[7][8] Goreh returned to India as a missionary in 1880.[3] Her first published collection, From India's Coral Strand (1883),[9] features poetry with Christian missionary themes, informed by Goreh's experience as an Indian woman among Westerners.[5] 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..."[6] 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.[10][11][12]
Goreh taught at a girls' school in Amritsar.[13] 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.[5] She wrote a pamphlet, "Evangelistic Work Among Women" (1908).[14] In 1932 she retired from mission work.[5]
Hymns by Goreh
- "The Great Refiner"[15]
- "No Disappointment Yonder" (also titled "Over Yonder")[16]
- "Lo, the Darkness Gathers Round Us" (also titled "Beacon-Light")[17]
- "In the Secret of his Presence"[18] The lyrics were treated to a musical setting by Australian composer Ernest Edwin Mitchell[19]
Personal life
Goreh died in 1937, in her eighties, at St. Catherine's Hospital in Kanpur.[5]
References
- ↑ Enabling Encounters: The Case of Nilakanth Nehemiah Goreh, Brahmin Convert. International Bulletin of Missionary Research({Template:Date).
- ↑ Nehemiah Goreh. The Church Missionary Review({Template:Date).
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Lady Hymn Writers{{#if:Pitman|, Pitman}. T. Nelson and sons(1892)
- ↑ Ellen Lakshmi Goreh. The Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology. Retrieved 2021-11-13.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 '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]. Asian Women({Template:Date).
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 Ellen Lakshmi Goreh. HymnTime. Retrieved 2021-11-13.
- ↑ The Day of days, conducted by C. Bullock{{#if:Bullock|, Bullock}(1883)
- ↑ Some Examples of the Higher Education among the Women of India. Woman's Work for Woman({Template:Date).
- ↑ "From India's Coral Strand:" Hymns of Christian Faith{{#if:Goreh|, Goreh}. "Home Words" Publishing Office(1883)
- ↑ Gospel Hymn. Expositor and Current Anecdotes({Template:Date).
- ↑ What the Intellect of India Reads. Woman's Work({Template:Date).
- ↑ In the Secret of His Presence. Herald of Gospel Liberty({Template:Date).
- ↑ The Punjab and Sindh missions of the Church missionary society{{#if:Clark|, Clark}. Church Missionary Society(1885)
- ↑ Evangelistic Work Among Women{{#if:Goreh|, Goreh}. Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge(1908)
- ↑ The Great Refiner. Hymnary.org. Retrieved 2021-11-13.
- ↑ Over Yonder. Hymnary.org. Retrieved 2021-11-13.
- ↑ Beacon-Light. Hymnary.org. Retrieved 2021-11-13.
- ↑ In the Secret of His Presence. Hymnary.org. Retrieved 2021-11-13.
- ↑ Two sacred songs the music composed by Ernest Edwin Mitchell. Ernest Edwin Mitchell.
External links
- Nancy Jiwon Cho, The ministry of song : unmarried British women's hymn writing, 1760-1936 Template:Webarchive (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