Harkness, Georgia Elma (1891–1974)

US educator and author. She taught philosophy and religion at Elmira College, New York, from 1923–37, simultaneously publishing books that developed her evangelical liberal ideas. Holy Flame, the first of her several volumes of devotional poetry, appeared in 1935. She later taught at Mount Holyoke and at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California. Retiring to Claremont, California, in 1961, she continued to publish a book a year until her death.

Harkness was born in Harkness, New York, and was raised on a farm. She graduated from Cornell University in 1912, and taught high school for several years before studying for her PhD at Brown University, graduating in 1923. Among her 38 books is The Dark Night of The Soul (1945), in which she wrote about the religious meaning of suffering.