Rumer Godden

Rumer Godden was an English novelist who spent a long time in India, which became a locale for many of her novels. She was born in Eastbourne but her parents took her to India because her father had a job there. She was sent home to school later on. She was born in 1907, and spent part of the World War One years in India. She then trained as a dance teacher and in 1925 she opened a dance school in Calcutta. She married in 1934 because she was pregnant, but the marriage was not happy. She and her children lived in Kashmir when her husband joined the army, but at the end of the war, she moved back to England and lived in London. Her time in London inspired her novel about a garden, and the London children. She got a divorce and a few years later married James Dixon, a civil servant. She became Interested in the Roman Catholic church and many of her novels had nuns and a religious setting. Her first big novel, Black Narcissus was set in an Anglican convent. However due to her divorce, it took soem time before she converted to Roman Catholicism I hope to write some more about Rumer Godden soon. Rumer Godden wrote many stories for children and she also wrote very well about children and adolescents. Some of her works are about young girls coming of age. One novel is called An Offering of Sparrows, which is set in a poor area of London, and is about the local children who try to make their life brighter, particularly a little girl called Lovejoy whose mother neglects her.. Godden also wrote a novel about a Catholic convent, called In this House of Brede, about a middle aged woman, Philippa who goes into the convent after her husband dies, and has to adjust to life in a cloistered community. Philippa has lived abroad a good deal but loves the English country where Brede is located. She wrote about 60 novels and lived to old age. Im currently reading Breakfast with the Nikolides, which is set in India after the Second world War, and is about an ENglish man who works there advising Indian farmers and trying to make agriculture more prosperous. When his estranged wife and daughters come after several years, tension arises as his wife cannot relate to Indians.