author
Alice B. (Alice Boucher) Van Doren
An early 20th-century writer on education and social change in India, she is best known for Lighted to Lighten, a book that brought the lives and prospects of Indian women to English-language readers. Her work sits at the crossroads of missionary history, women's education, and reform-era nonfiction.
1 Audiobook
Lighted to Lighten: the Hope of India A Study of Conditions among Women in India
by Alice B. (Alice Boucher) Van Doren
About the author
Alice Boucher Van Doren was an American author whose surviving books focus on India, especially education and the lives of women and girls. Records from Project Gutenberg and Open Library link her name to Lighted to Lighten: the Hope of India (1922), Christian Education in the Villages of India (1931), and Christian High Schools in India (1936).
Her best-known work, Lighted to Lighten, presents India through the lens of Christian missionary and educational reform, with special attention to opportunities opening up for women in the early 20th century. Today, her writing is often read as a historical document as much as a work of advocacy, reflecting both the ambitions and the assumptions of its era.
Reliable public sources on her personal life are limited, so this profile stays close to what can be confirmed from library and public-domain records. Even so, the books attached to her name show a clear and consistent interest in schooling, religion, and social change in India.