I'm celebrating the life and work of Rumer Godden…

… an author of more than sixty books.  Read on…

Born in 1907 on December 10th in Eastbourne, Sussex, Godden grew up with her three sisters in Narayangangj - the sixth largest city in Bangladesh. Her father worked for the Brahmaputra Steam Navigation Company.

Initially sent to School in England, her parents brought her back to the sub-continent at the outbreak of the first war in 1914. Rumer and her sisters did not return to England until 1920 to resume their education in Eastbourne.

Godden trained as a dance teacher and travelled to Calcutta in 1925 to open a school for dance. With the help of her sister Nancy, Rumer ran the school for twenty years. But she was also writing during this time, and in 1939 she published her first best-selling novel, Black Narcissus. An iconic tale of life in a remote convent that has been serialised for TV and adapted for film.

But it wasn't that book that brought Godden to my notice. As a teenager, I remember sitting in the school playground with a friend, talking about books, and one of them was The Greengage Summer. On my next trip to the library, I sought it out and read it in one weekend. I was so taken with the central character of Joss Grey - a sixteen-year-old English girl who is required to look after her siblings when her mother is taken ill on holiday in France - that I spent far too much of my spare time day-dreaming that I could have been Joss. Luckily I did grow out of that silly little phase, but I also began working my way through Godden's other books.

As an imperious fourteen-year-old, of course, her children's books were instantly dismissed. But I remember the library assistant giving me a very old-fashioned look when she saw I was borrowing Black Narcissus!

Of all of Godden's books, I think I would have to say that In this House of Brede is the one to which I will always return. Set primarily in a convent here in England, it charts the life of Philippa, a businesswoman. She gives up everything to join the cloistered world of a group of Benedictine nuns at an abbey in Sussex. The book examines the dynamics between the characters and the minutiae of convent life. The day-to-day stresses and strains within the hierarchy of the convent are set against the gradually revealed background of Philippa's former life - a carefully mapped revelation of a terrible personal tragedy. This comes up in the very last quarter of the book as some new Japanese postulants arrive at the abbey. The writing is so intense, the death so poignant that I defy any reader not to be moved to tears. I was the first time I read the book, and each re-reading never fails to bring tears to my eyes. Although the language is of its time, the book is a masterclass in plotting and demonstrates the elegance of Godden's literary exposition.

Over the years, I have been gradually collecting her books, and I've obtained quite a shelf-full. But novels were not her only form of writing. She created almost thirty books for children, a dozen books of non-fiction, five books of poetry, numerous short stories and some translations.

After a long life, a happy second marriage, and a stunning career, Rumer died on this day in 1998 at the age of ninety.

If you enjoyed this post you may like to read about the life and work of A. A. Milne or my visit to Greenaway, the home of Agatha Christie