Amy Carmichael Books: A Guide to 7 Free Classics and Where to Start
Amy Carmichael (1867–1951) served in South India for fifty-five years and wrote about thirty-five books. TheWay Library has seven of them, all free to read. They come from the first half of her ministry, the years of village evangelism and the beginning of her work for temple children at Dohnavur: three books about the mission, one about the children, one true story of a Hindu woman's faith, and two biographies of missionaries she admired. For her life story, see who was Amy Carmichael.
Her later devotional books, such as If, Gold Cord and Edges of His Ways, aren't in the library.
Where to start
If you're new to Amy Carmichael, start with Mimosa. It's short, it's true, and it shows her at her best. Then choose by what you want:
- The plain truth about missionary work: Things as They Are, then Overweights of Joy.
- The rescued children of Dohnavur: Lotus Buds.
- Her first glimpses of India: From the Fight.
- Missionary biography: Walker of Tinnevelly or Ragland, Pioneer.
Every quotation below is checked against the book it comes from. For many more, see our collection of Amy Carmichael quotes.
A true story of faith
Mimosa: Who Was Charmed
Mimosa was a Hindu girl who visited the mission at Dohnavur once as a child and heard that there is a God who loves her. Her father took her home, and for more than twenty years she lived in her village with almost no Christian teaching. She refused to worship idols and prayed to the one God she had heard of, through marriage, debt, sickness, her husband's blindness and madness, and pressure to use charms. At last she came back to Dohnavur and told her story. In forty short chapters Amy shows how far the love of Christ can follow one soul.
The seed is not your poor little word. The seed is the Word of God.
Mimosa, Foreword to the First Edition
The mission in South India
From the Fight (about 1900)
Her first book from India, which she called "a piece of patchwork": magazine pieces, letters home and new writing, gathered into five chapters. It describes visits to Hindu women in their homes, open-air preaching to festival crowds, the hold of caste and custom on any woman who might confess Christ, scenes of sorrow, and the longing she heard in Tamil poetry. It's a plea for prayer and for workers. Our copy comes from an uncorrected scan and has scattered misread letters.
And caste is a thing with an iron hand: it grips, and it grips to the death.
From the Fight, Caste and Custom
Things as They Are (1903)
Her best-known early book, written to tell people at home the truth about mission work rather than cheerful reports. She follows her band of Indian women through the Tamil villages: dull days, doors shut and opened, seekers who turn back, and young converts persecuted, carried off or worse. Later chapters expose the dedication of children to the temples. Through it all she says that only God can convert a soul, so the real need is prayer that prevails.
Christ counted souls worth Calvary. What do we count them worth?
Things as They Are, What do we count them worth?
Some readers found it too dark, so read it with Overweights of Joy close by. Start with the chapters Humdrum and What do we count them worth? Read Things as They Are.
Overweights of Joy (1906)
Written for readers who were discouraged by Things as They Are. Her purpose came from Psalm 138:1, "before the gods will I sing praise unto thee": to let the song of joy be heard in the presence of the powers that held India. She tells of converts from Hinduism, families divided by conversion, answered prayer, the first temple children, and the death of a baby she loved, which taught her to persist.
The song is sung in the night: let no one dream the night has passed.
Overweights of Joy, Before the Gods Will I Sing
The children of Dohnavur
Lotus Buds (1909)
A book about the little children in her care, many saved from being given to the temples. The first half is a gallery of children, helpers and nursery life, told with humor and tenderness, including the chapter "The Glory of the Usual" on finding holiness in ordinary work. The second half lays out the evidence she gathered about the secret traffic in children and asks readers to pray and act.
Sometimes it has seemed to us that we were set to learn and to teach a new and difficult lesson, the sacredness of the commonplace.
Lotus Buds, The Glory of the Usual
Missionary biography
Walker of Tinnevelly (1916)
The life of Thomas Walker, the Church Missionary Society missionary who led Amy's work in Tinnevelly for fifteen years and moved to Dohnavur with her. Using his journal and letters, she follows him from boyhood and London curacies through years of camp preaching, training work, missions to the old Syrian churches of Travancore, his longing for revival, and his last days. She wanted to show a missionary's real life, routine and all.
In India we do not paint our teak: we let it show its grain.
Walker of Tinnevelly, Foreword
It's long, so dip into it. Read Walker of Tinnevelly.
Ragland, Pioneer (1922)
A retelling of the life of Thomas Gajetan Ragland, a Cambridge scholar who became a missionary in South India and, so far as she could find, the first Englishman to live in tents among the villages as a missionary of Christ. She found an old, forgotten memoir of him during a forest holiday with the Dohnavur children and wrote this in a cave by a mountain stream. It traces his inner struggles and surrender, his camping years in North Tinnevelly, and what she saw of his work fifty years later.
Verily, it is no vain and fruitless thing to be God's corn of wheat.
Ragland, Pioneer, Note
Why read Amy Carmichael today
She tells the truth. She won't pretend that following Christ is easy or that mission work is exciting, and she won't let you forget that it's worth everything. Begin with Mimosa, then read Things as They Are and Lotus Buds. For more books like these, see the best missionary biographies. All seven books are on the Amy Carmichael author page.