Rumer Godden

10 December 1907 - 08 November 1998

Standard Name: Godden, Rumer

Birth Name: Margaret Rumer Godden

Nickname: Peggie

Married Name: Rumer Foster

Married Name: Rumer Haynes-Dixon

RG was a popular writer for much of the twentieth century, author of about seventy books: more than twenty novels for adults (some drawing on her own experiences), as well as about the same number of story-books for children, biographies, and several volumes of more or less fictionalised memoirs. Her earliest publications were of poetry; she once spent a whole afternoon writing a poem in her head;

Godden, Rumer. Rungli-Rungliot. P. Davies, 1944.

and she published five poetry collections. She later said, however, that she was not a poet, though on occasion she felt like one.

Full profile

Connections

Connections Sort descending	Author name	Excerpt
Intertextuality and Influence	Joan Aiken	She presents this old house (home to successive writers: Henry James , E. F. Benson , and Rumer Godden ) as holding the story of a mysterious death in the later eighteenth century, which leaves...
Intertextuality and Influence	Virginia Woolf	The original audience included Q. D. Roth (later Leavis) and Kathleen Raine . Women writers who later counted it an important influence on them included such disparate figures as Muriel Box and Rumer Godden ...
Intertextuality and Influence	Flora Annie Steel	An early study of FAS 's writings was A Star of India by Daya Patwardhan , complete with a bibliographical list of her works and investigation of her real-life sources. Powell, Violet. Flora Annie Steel: Novelist of India. Heinemann, 1981. 69 Violet Powell, who admires...
Intertextuality and Influence	Ruth Prawer Jhabvala	The title-story features another guru who would be at home in western show-business. Two More Under the Indian Sun alludes through its title to the memoir Two Under the Indian Sun, 1966, by Jon
Literary responses	Beatrix Potter	In an article on the author, Rumer Godden wrote: Simplicity, modesty, truth, balance: these are the qualities to be found in BP and, overriding all of them, love. qtd. in Contemporary Authors: New Revision Series. Gale Research, 1981–2024, Numerous volumes. 107 In 2002, the centenary of The...
Literary responses	Ruth Prawer Jhabvala	This collection received review coverage beyond any of RPJ 's earlier works. One of the initial reviews, in the New York Review of Books, was by Rumer Godden (whose work RPJ had implicitly alluded...
Reception	G. B. Stern	Rumer Godden mentioned this book in connection with her own dog novel, Chinese Puzzle.
Reception	Muriel Spark	This novel was chosen a Book Society recommendation (of which between six and ten were selected per month); it was not the choice of the month, since the panel felt it was too morbid—deeply...
Residence	Henry James	After his humiliating experience on stage at the opening of his play Guy Domville on 5 January 1895, he withdrew from London to Rye in Sussex, where he rented and eventually bought Lamb House...
Residence	Sheila Kaye-Smith	She refused to leave home during the Blitz of 1940, when the German planes regularly overhead caused the area to be known as Bomb Alley. Stern, G. B. . And did he stop and speak to you?. Henry Regnery, 1958. 82 She worked with her ears plugged to keep...
Textual Features	Beatrix Potter	Author and Potter critic Rumer Godden points out that the lovers' pas de deux between Pigling Bland and Pig-wig ends with a lift in which her head touches the hams and sausages hanging from the...
Textual Production	Gillian Clarke	GC has contributed poems to more than half a dozen journals, Welsh, English, and American, and most frequently to Poetry Wales, the New Welsh Review, and Poetry Nation Review (PNR). She has reviewed...

Timeline

1752

Francis Coventry anonymously published The History of Pompey the Little; or, the life and adventures of a lap-dog, a novel à clef which satirizes Pompey's successive owners.

English Short Title Catalogue. http://estc.bl.uk/.

1 January 1916

The British edition of Vogue (an American fashion magazine) began publishing from Condé Nast in Hanover Square, London.

Winship, Janice. Inside Women’s Magazines. Pandora, 1987.

166

White, Cynthia L. Women’s Magazines 1693-1968. Michael Joseph, 1970.

British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.

Spawls, Alice. “Does one flare or cling?”. London Review of Books, Vol.

, No. 9, 5 May 2016, pp. 40-2.

By mid 1943

Famine reached frightening proportions in British-ruled Bengal (then a part of India).

Chisholm, Anne. Rumer Godden, A Storyteller’s Life. Pan Books, 1999.

186

Texts

Godden, Rumer. A Breath of Air. M. Joseph, 1950.

Godden, Rumer. A Candle for St. Jude. M. Joseph, 1948.

Godden, Rumer. A Fugue in Time. M. Joseph, 1945.

Godden, Rumer. A House with Four Rooms. Macmillan, 1989.

Dickinson, Emily et al. A Letter to the World. Bodley Head, 1968.

Godden, Rumer. A Time to Dance, No Time to Weep. Macmillan, 1987.

Godden, Rumer. An Episode of Sparrows. Viking, 1955.

Godden, Rumer. An Episode of Sparrows. Reprint Society, 1957.

Godden, Rumer. Bengal Journey. Longmans, Green, 1945.

Godden, Rumer. Black Narcissus. P. Davies, 1939.

Godden, Rumer. Breakfast with the Nikolides. P. Davis, 1942.

Godden, Rumer. China Court. Macmillan, 1961.

Godden, Rumer. Chinese Puzzle. P. Davies, 1936.

Godden, Rumer. Coromandel Sea Change. Macmillan, 1991.

Godden, Rumer. Cromartie v. the God Shiva. Macmillan, 1997.

Godden, Rumer. Five for Sorrow, Ten for Joy. Macmillan, 1979.

Godden, Rumer. Gulbadan. Macmillan, 1980.

Godden, Rumer. Gypsy, Gypsy. P. Davies, 1940.

Godden, Rumer. Hans Christian Andersen. Knopf, 1954.

Godden, Rumer, and Adrienne Adams. Impunity Jane. Viking, 1954.

Godden, Rumer. In Noah’s Ark. M. Joseph, 1949.

Godden, Rumer. In This House of Brede. Macmillan, 1969.

Godden, Rumer. Kingfishers Catch Fire. Macmillan, 1953.

Godden, Rumer. Mooltiki. Macmillan, 1957.

Manders, Olga Sarah. Mrs. Manders’ Cook Book. Editor Godden, Rumer, Viking, 1968.