Margaret Rumer GoddenOBE (10 December 1907 – 8 November 1998[1]) was a British author of more than 60fiction andnon-fiction books. Nine of her works have been made into films,[2] most notablyBlack Narcissus in 1947 andThe River in 1951.
A few of her works were co-written with her elder sister, novelistJon Godden, includingTwo Under the Indian Sun, a memoir of the Goddens' childhood in a region of India now part ofBangladesh.
Godden returned to the United Kingdom with her sisters to continue her interrupted schooling in 1920, spending time atMoira House School in Eastbourne and eventually training as a dance teacher. She went back toCalcutta in 1925 and opened a dance school for English and Indian children.[3] Godden ran the school for 20 years with the help of her sister Nancy. During this time she published her first best-seller, the 1939 novelBlack Narcissus.
The Greengage Summer (1958), 1962 Pan paperback edition
In 1942, after eight years in an unhappy marriage (one she entered into in 1934 because she was pregnant),[3] she moved with her two daughters, Jane and Paula,[4] (her husband Laurence Foster having joined the army)[3] toKashmir, living first on a houseboat and then in a rented house where she started a farm. The novelKingfishers Catch Fire was based on her time in Kashmir. After a mysterious incident in which it appeared that an attempt had been made to poison both her and her daughters, she returned to Calcutta in 1944. She returned to the United Kingdom in 1945 to concentrate on her writing, frequently moving house but living mostly inSussex and London. She was divorced in 1948.[3] After returning from America to oversee the script for the movie of her bookThe River, Godden married civil servant James Haynes Dixon on 26November 1949.
In the early 1950s Godden became interested in the Catholic Church, though she did not officially convert until 1968,[5] and several of her later novels contain sympathetic portrayals of Catholic priests and nuns. In addition toBlack Narcissus, two of her books deal with the subject of women in religious communities. InFive for Sorrow, Ten for Joy andIn This House of Brede she acutely examined the balance between the mystical, spiritual aspects of religion and the practical, human realities of religious life.
A number of Godden's novels are set in India, the atmosphere of which she evokes through all the senses; her writing is vivid with detail of smells, textures, light, flowers, noises and tactile experiences. Her books for children, especially her several doll stories, strongly convey the secret thoughts, confusions, disappointments and aspirations of childhood. Her plots often involve unusual young people not recognised for their talents by ordinary lower- or middle-class people but supported by the educated, rich, and upper-class, to the anger, resentment, and puzzlement of their relatives. She won a1972 Whitbread award forThe Diddakoi, a young adult novel about Gypsies, televised by the BBC asKizzy.[3]
In 1968 she took the tenancy ofLamb House inRye, East Sussex, where she lived until the death of her husband in 1973. She moved toMoniaive inDumfriesshire in 1978, when she was 70, to be near her daughter Jane.[3] She was appointed anOfficer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1993. She visited India once more, in 1994, returning to Kashmir for the filming of a BBCBookmark documentary about her life and books.
Rumer Godden died on 8 November 1998 at the age of 90 after a series of strokes; her ashes were buried with those of her second husband in Rye.[3]
1936Chinese Puzzle, her first published book-length work
1937The Lady and the Unicorn
1939Black Narcissus, a story about the disorientation of BritishAnglican nuns in India; the first of her books to be adapted for the screen, as thefilm of the same name in 1947; a radio adaptation was also broadcast in 2008.[6][7][8] ABBC mini-series was announced in September 2019 and aired in late 2020.[9]
1968Gone: A Thread of Stories (written with Jon Godden)
1968Swans and Turtles (short stories)
1969In This House of Brede, follows Philippa along with other cloistered Benedictine nuns in the abbey of Brede inSussex, through Philippa's first years in the abbey; made into a 1975 television film starringDiana Rigg
1975The Peacock Spring, adapted for television in 1995
1961Saint Jerome and the Lion (retelling of the legend in verse)
1961Miss Happiness and Miss Flower, about Japanese dolls and the house built for them.
1963Little Plum, the sequel toMiss Happiness and Miss Flower
1964Home is the Sailor
1967The Kitchen Madonna: two children make an icon for their Ukrainian housekeeper, a war refugee.
1969Operation Sippacik
1972The Diddakoi (also published asGypsy Girl), a children's book and winner of theWhitbread Award. Adapted by theBBC as a radio drama of the same name starringNisa Cole,[11] and for television asKizzy.
.jpg)
_by_Rumer_Godden.jpg)
Media related toRumer Godden at Wikimedia Commons