Reba Ray

Reba Ray (1876 – 1957) was an Indian Odia poet educationist and administrator. Best known as one of the earliest Odia women writers, she was also founder of Model Girls' School, Cuttack. Her short story Sanyasi is considered earliest modern Odia short story by a woman writer.^[2] She was niece of renowned Odia poet Madhusudan Rao.^[1]

Reba Ray
Born	1876 (1876)
Died	7 August 1957(1957-08-07) (aged 80–81)[1]
Occupation	Educationist, Poet
Language	Odia
Nationality	Indian
Notable works	Anjali

Personal life

She was born on 1857. Many of her early life details are not known. She was married to well known writer Sadhu Charan Ray.^{[citation needed]}

Career

She was one of the pioneers for women's education. She established Model Girls' School at Cuttack in 1906. It had provision for teaching music and sewing.^[3][4] She founded a woman's magazine Asha in 1892. She also founded Odisha's first children's magazine Prabhat.^[5] Her stories were published in Utkal Sahitya magazine as well.^[6] She set up another school at Guhali, Jajpur.^[7][8]

Published works

• Anjali, 1903 ^[6]
• Shakuntala, 1904 ^[6]

References

1. Mohanty, S. (2005). Early Women's Writings in Orissa, 1898-1950: A Lost Tradition. SAGE Publications. p. 85. ISBN 978-0-7619-3308-3. Retrieved 2020-04-06.
2. Venkatesh, M.R. (2019-12-09). "A rich anthology of stories from Odisha mirror many worlds in one text". Deccan Chronicle. Retrieved 2020-04-06.
3. Orissa History Congress. Session (1979). Proceedings of the Annual Session. The Congress. p. 81. Retrieved 2020-04-06.
4. Lal, M.; Panja, S.; Satpathy, S. (2004). Signifying the Self: Women and Literature. Macmillan critical readers. Macmillan India. p. 54. ISBN 978-1-4039-2405-6. Retrieved 2020-04-06.
5. "It's a tough job to run an Oriya children's magazine". The New Indian Express. 2009-01-06. Retrieved 2020-04-10.
6. Mohanty, S. (2005). Early Women's Writings in Orissa, 1898-1950: A Lost Tradition. SAGE Publications. ISBN 978-0-7619-3308-3. Retrieved 2020-04-06.
7. Mohanty, Maheswar (2009). Prabhata o Reba Ray. Odisha: Sishu Sahitya Lekhaka Sammilani. p. 6.
8. Choudhury, Ramadevi; Kar, Supriya (2015). "Journey of Life". Indian Literature. 3 (287): 39–51. JSTOR 44478661.