Overview

Clever, attractive and ambitious, intellectually daring and physically courageous, Cornelia Sorabji was a truly remarkable woman. As India's first female lawyer, she was original and often outspoken in her views - for example, in her criticism of Gandhi and her surprising friendship with Katherine Mayo. Cornelia Sorabji resists easy classification, either as a feminist or as an imperialist. She is an Indian whose loyalty to the British Raj never wavered; a passionate advocate of women's rights whose own career was nearly compromised through her inappropriate relationship with a married man; and, an independent and free-thinking intellectual who depended for work on patronage from an elite circle. Cornelia Sorabji's long and fulfilling life was anything but simple. How did she reconcile these apparent contradictions? How did she succeed in opening doors to aspects of Indian and British life which remain closed to so many, even today - and where did she run into difficulties? Through its beguiling portrait of a determined and pioneering woman at the heart of the Raj, this rich and important story will captivate everyone with an interest in Indian or British history.

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9781848853751

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Reviews

'I have been struck by the wealth of detail, the fresh insights and the new light that Richard Sorabji is able to throw on the life of the extraordinary woman who was his aunt as well as India's first woman lawyer. This is an important and necessary book. Written with the special insight and knowledge he possesses as Cornelia's only and favourite nephew, and through scrupulous research in her unpublished papers, Sorabji is able to explain her involvement with Katherine Mayo, her disagreements with Gandhi, her disappointments in her career and other crucial aspects of her life. There is sympathetic understanding, but no special pleading or whitewashing of her behaviour. Moving between Britain (Oxford and London in particular), and India, Opening Doors gives us a vivid larger picture of the influential worlds Cornelia inhabited.' - Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, Global Distinguished Professor, New York University; 'Although a little of Cornelia Sorabji's life has been described elsewhere, no other author has hitherto explored its contradictions and complexity. The full story is interesting on many levels. Richard Sorabji does not just tell the story of a woman who will wake up historians. His work on Cornelia Sorabji's letters and diaries and his understanding, as her nephew, of her relations with her family, enables him to examine another paradox, always fascinating to biographers: that of the intelligent and strong woman who, despite her clarity of understanding, allows emotional entanglements to derail her career. Opening Doors is a startling example of biography through history and history through biography.' - Janet Morgan, author of Edwina Mountbatten: A Life of Her Own

Author Information

Professor Richard Sorabji is an Honorary Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford, and Cyprus Global Distinguished Professor of Classics, New York University. He is the author of three books on the physical universe (Necessity Cause and Blame; Time Creation and the Continuum; Matter, Space and Motion) and three books on Mind and Morals (Animal Minds and Human Morals; Emotion and Peace of Mind; Self: Individuality, Life, and Death). Among other books, he co-edited The Ethics of War in Different Traditions. He is the founder and Director of a project at King's College, London on the transition between ancient and medieval philosophy, which to date has resulted in 80 volumes of translation and a Sourcebook. He is currently writing a book on the philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi.

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