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Cornelia Sorabji
‐
First woman of any ethnicity admitted to study and sit the law exams in England
Place of birth
Date of arrival to Britain
Location(s)
Woodstock Road
Oxford
OX2 6HD
United Kingdom Finsbury Park
London
N4 3EU
United Kingdom 22 Old Buildings, Lincoln's Inn
London
WC2A 3UP
United Kingdom
Place of death
Finsbury Park, London
Date of time spent in Britain
1889–94 (studied for BCL degree at Somerville College, Oxford then trained at solicitor’s firm in Lincoln’s Inn, London); 1922–3 (moved to England and stayed at the Halcyon Club, 13/14 Cork Street, London); 1925 (visited England and stayed at the Halcyon Club, London); 1932 (visited England for treatment of deteriorating health); 1938 (settled permanently in England)
About
Cornelia Sorabji was an Indian Parsee Christian who is seen as India’s first female barrister although she was never technically called to the English Bar. She studied for a law degree at Somerville College, Oxford (1889–93), the first woman to sit the law exams in the country. Despite standing first in university examinations at the Deccan College, Sorabji was not eligible for the Government of India scholarship to study in England. She studied in Britain with the help of funds raised by her British friends the Hobhouses.
When Sorabji first arrived in England she stayed with Elizabeth Adelaide Manning, Secretary of the National Indian Association. Sorabji had met Manning on her visit to India in January of that year. At Oxford, Sorabji developed an enduring friendship with the Master of Balliol College, Benjamin Jowett. This granted her access to members of the upper classes of British society, and consequently she remained loyal to the British through her career. Sorabji's memoir, India Calling, recalls the number of prominent establishment figures Sorabji met during her time in Britain. Sorabji became a member of Lincoln’s Inn in 1922, having been barred as a woman when a student. Her career was dedicated to the cause of the ‘purdahnashins’ (secluded women) in India. In 1929, upon retirement, Cornelia Sorabji settled in England. She died at her home in Finsbury Park in 1954.
E. J. Beck, Millicent Garrett Fawcett, Lord Arthur and Lady Mary Hobhouse, Benjamin Jowett, Elizabeth Adelaide Manning, Monier Monier-Williams, Max Müller, Florence Nightingale, Alice Sorabji Pennell.
Association of University Women in India, Bengal Branch of the National Council of Women in India, Bengal League of Social Service for Women, Federation of University Women.
Love and Life Beyond the Purdah (London: Fremantle & Co., 1901)
Sun-Babies: Studies in the Child-Life of India (London: John Murray, 1904)
Between the Twilights: Being Studies of Indian Women by One of Themselves (London: Harper, 1908)
Indian Tales of the Great Ones Among Men, Women, and Bird-People (Bombay: Blackie, 1916)
The Purdahnashin, with a foreword by the Countess of Minto (Calcutta: Thacker, Spink & Co, 1917)
Sun Babies: Studies in Colour (London: Blackie, 1918)
Shubala – A Child Mother (Calcutta: Baptist Mission Press, 1920)
Therefore: An Impression of Sorabji Kharsedji Langrana and His Wife Francina (London: Oxford University Press, 1924)
Gold Mohur Time (London: Alexander Moring, 1930)
Susie Sorabji, Christian-Parsee Educationist of Western India: A Memoir (London: Oxford University Press, 1932)
India Calling: The Memories of Cornelia Sorabji (London: Nisbet & Co., 1934)
India Recalled (London: Nisbet & Co., 1936)
Queen Mary’s Book of India (London: Harrap, 1943)
Reprints of her work:
India Calling, ed. by Elleke Boehmer and Naella Grew (Nottingham: Trent Editions, 2004)
Love and Life Behind the Purdah, ed. by Chandani Lokuge (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003)
Adams, Pauline, Somerville for Women: An Oxford College, 1879–1993 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996)
Burton, Antoinette, Burdens of History: British Feminists, Indian Women, and Imperial Culture, 1865–1915 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994)
Burton, Antoinette, At the Heart of the Empire: Indians and the Colonial Encounter In late Victorian Britain (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998)
Burton, Antoinette, Dwelling in the Archive: Women Writing House, Home and History in Late Colonial India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003)
Burton, Antoinette (ed.) Politics and Empire in Victorian Britain (New York: Palgrave, 2001)
Forbes, Geraldine, Women in Modern India, The New Cambridge History of India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998)
Gooptu, Suparna, Cornelia Sorabji: India’s Pioneering Woman Lawyer (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006)
Innes, C. L., A History of Black and Asian Writing in Britain, 1700–2000, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008)
Jayawardena, Kumari, The White Woman’s Other Burden: Western Women and South Asia during British Colonial Rule (London: Routledge, 1995)
Mehrotra, Arvind Krishna (ed.) A History of Indian Literature in English (London: Hurst & Company, 2003)
Sarker, Sonita and De, Esha Niyogi, Trans-status Subjects: Gender in the Globalization of South and Southeast Asia (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002)
Sorabji, Richard, Opening Doors: The Untold Story of Cornelia Sorabji, Reformer, Lawyer and Champion of Women's Rights in India (London: I. B. Tauris, 2010)
Symonds, Richard, Oxford and Empire: The Lost Cause? (Oxford: Clarendon, 1986)
Tharu, Susie and Lalitha, K. (eds) Women Writing in India, 600BC to the Present, vol. 1 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1991)
Vadgama, K., India in Britain: The Indian Contribution to the British Way of Life (London: R. Royce, 1984)
Visram, Rozina, Ayahs, Lascars and Princes: The Story of Indians in Britain, 1700–1947 (London: Pluto Press, 1986)
L/I/1/1520, India Office Records, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras
Mss Eur F165 (letters), Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras
7MGF, letters to M. G. Fawcett, The Women's Library, London School of Economics, London
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Next term we are to have two Indian Princesses in residence here – the daughters of Dhuleep Singh. They are to have a maid to look after them & their governess will reside in Town - & we are to call them 'Princess'. The sweet Warden was telling me about it & began 'I want you to be very good to me next Term & help me make our Princesses happy'. I wonder if they will be snobbish.
Letter from Cornelia Sorabji to her parents, dated March 1890, Mss Eur F165/2, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras
Image credit
Photo courtesy of Richard Sorabji
