Rumer Godden

Margaret Rumer Godden (10 December 1907 – 8 November 1998) 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.

Early life

Godden was born in Eastbourne, Sussex, England. She grew up with her three sisters in Narayanganj, colonial India (later Bangladesh), 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 (one she entered into in 1934 because she was pregnant), she moved with her two daughters, Jane and Paula, (her husband Laurence Foster having joined the army) 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 26 November 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 (OBE) 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

Fiction

1936 Chinese Puzzle, her first published book-length work

1937 The Lady and the Unicorn

1939 Black Narcissus, filmed in 1947; radio adaptation in 2008, BBC mini-series aired 2020.

1940 Gypsy, Gypsy

1942 Breakfast with the Nikolides

1945 A Fugue in Time, published in the US as Take Three Tenses, made into the film Enchantment in 1948 starring David Niven and Teresa Wright

1946 The River, made into a film in 1951 directed by Jean Renoir; she collaborated on the screenplay for the film.

1947 A Candle for St. Jude

1950 A Breath of Air

1953 Kingfishers Catch Fire

1956 An Episode of Sparrows, made into the film Innocent Sinners in 1958

1957 Mooltiki, and Other Stories and Poems of India

1958 The Greengage Summer, made into a film in 1961

1961 China Court: The Hours of a Country House

1963 The Battle of the Villa Fiorita, filmed in 1965

1968 Gone: A Thread of Stories (written with Jon Godden)

1968 Swans and Turtles (short stories)

1969 In This House of Brede, made into a 1975 television film starring Diana Rigg

1975 The Peacock Spring, adapted for television in 1995

1979 Five For Sorrow, Ten For Joy

1981 The Dark Horse

1984 Thursday's Children (Viking, New York)

1989 Indian Dust (written with Jon Godden)

1990 Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love: Stories (written with Jon Godden)

1991 Coromandel Sea Change

1994 Pippa Passes

1997 Cromartie vs. the God Shiva, her last novel

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 (biography)

1966 Two Under the Indian Sun (childhood memories – written with Jon Godden)

1968 Mrs. Manders' Cook Book

1971 The Tale of the Tales: Beatrix Potter Ballet

1972 Shiva's Pigeons (written with Jon Godden)

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 (retelling of the legend in verse)

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 (also published as Gypsy Girl), winner of the Whitbread Award. Adapted by the BBC as a radio drama starring Nisa Cole, and for television as Kizzy.