Rumer Godden


Margaret Rumer Godden was a British author of more than 60 fiction and non-fiction books. Nine of her works have been made into films, most notably Black Narcissus in 1947 and The River in 1951.
A few of her works were co-written with her elder sister, novelist Jon Godden, including Two Under the Indian Sun, a memoir of the Goddens' childhood in a region of India now part of Bangladesh.
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Early life

Godden was born in Eastbourne, Sussex, England. She grew up with her three sisters in Narayanganj, colonial India, where her father, a shipping company executive, worked for the Brahmaputra Steam Navigation Company. Her parents sent the girls to England for schooling, as was the custom of the time, but brought them back to Narayanganj when the First World War began.
Godden returned to the United Kingdom with her sisters to continue her interrupted schooling in 1920, spending time at Moira House School in Eastbourne and eventually training as a dance teacher. She went back to Calcutta in 1925 and opened a dance school for English and Indian children. 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 novel Black Narcissus.

Writing career

In 1942, after eight years in an unhappy marriage, she moved with her two daughters, Jane and Paula, to Kashmir, living first on a houseboat and then in a rented house where she started a farm. The novel Kingfishers Catch Fire was based on her time in Kashmir. After a mysterious incident, that appeared to be an attempt 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 in Sussex and London. She was divorced in 1948. After returning from America to oversee the script for the movie of her book The 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, and several of her later novels contain sympathetic portrayals of Catholic priests and nuns. In addition to Black Narcissus, two of her books deal with the subject of women in religious communities. In Five for Sorrow, Ten for Joy and In This House of Brede she 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. She won a 1972 Whitbread award for The Diddakoi, a young adult novel about Gypsies, televised by the BBC as Kizzy.

Later life and death

In 1968 she took the tenancy of Lamb House in Rye, East Sussex, where she lived until the death of her husband in 1973. She moved to Moniaive in Dumfriesshire in 1978, when she was 70, to be near her daughter Jane. She was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1993. She visited India once more, in 1994, returning to Kashmir for the filming of a BBC Bookmark 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.

Works

Books for adults

Fiction

Non-fiction

  • 1943 Rungli-Rungliot – republished in 1961 as Thus Far and No Further
  • 1945 Bengal Journey: A Story of the Part Played by Women in the Province, 1939–1945
  • 1955 Hans Christian Andersen
  • 1966 Two Under the Indian Sun
  • 1968 Mrs. Manders' Cook Book
  • 1971 The Tale of the Tales: Beatrix Potter Ballet
  • 1972 Shiva's Pigeons
  • 1977 The Butterfly Lions
  • 1980 Gulbadan: Portrait of a Rose Princess at the Mughal Court
  • 1987 A Time to Dance, No Time to Weep, an autobiography
  • 1989 A House with Four Rooms, an autobiography

Children's books

  • 1947 The Doll's House, made into an animated series: Tottie: [The Story of a Doll's House]
  • 1951 The Mousewife
  • 1952 Mouse House
  • 1954 Impunity Jane: The Story of a Pocket Doll
  • 1956 The Fairy Doll
  • 1958 The Story of Holly and Ivy
  • 1960 Candy Floss
  • 1961 Saint Jerome and the Lion
  • 1961 Miss Happiness and Miss Flower, about Japanese dolls and the house built for them.
  • 1963 Little Plum, the sequel to Miss Happiness and Miss Flower
  • 1964 Home is the Sailor
  • 1967 The Kitchen Madonna: two children make an icon for their Ukrainian housekeeper, a war refugee.
  • 1969 Operation Sippacik
  • 1972 The Diddakoi, winner of the Whitbread Award. Adapted by the BBC as a radio drama starring Nisa Cole, and for television as Kizzy.
  • 1972 The Old Woman Who Lived in a Vinegar Bottle
  • 1975 Mr. McFadden's Hallowe'en
  • 1977 The Rocking Horse Secret
  • 1978 A Kindle of Kittens
  • 1981 The Dragon of Og
  • 1983 Four Dolls
  • 1983 The Valiant Chatti-Maker
  • 1984 Mouse Time: Two Stories
  • 1990 Fu-Dog
  • 1992 Great Grandfather's House
  • 1992 Listen to the Nightingale
  • 1996 The Little Chair
  • 1996 ''Premlata and the Festival of Lights ''

Poetry

  • 1949 In Noah's Ark
  • 1968 A Letter to the World
  • 1996 Cockcrow to Starlight: A Day Full of Poetry
  • 1996 ''A Pocket Book of Spiritual Poems''

Translations