Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Rumer Godden
-
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.
97
and she published five poetry collections. She later said, however, that she was not a poet, though on occasion she felt like one.
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
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
...
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
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...
Reception
G. B. Stern
Rumer Godden
mentioned this book in connection with her own dog novel, Chinese Puzzle.
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...
Writing climate item
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...
Building item
1 January 1916
The British edition of Vogue (an American fashion magazine) began publishing from Condé Nast
in Hanover Square, London.
White, Cynthia L. Women’s Magazines 1693-1968. Michael Joseph, 1970.
90
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.
38
, No. 9, 5 May 2016, pp. 40-2.
By mid 1943: Famine reached frightening proportions in...
National or international item
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.