Godden, (Margaret) Rumer (1907–1998)

English novelist, poet, and writer of children's books. Her first popular success was the romantic novel Black Narcissus (1939; filmed in 1946). Like several of her finest books it is set in India, where she lived for many years. Among her works of children's fiction is The Story of Holly and Ivy (1958).

Returning to India after her schooling in England, she became increasingly alienated from the English colonial community there and started writing. Her first book was Chinese Puzzles (1936), followed by The Lady and the Unicorn (1937), and then Black Narcissus, which brought her a wide readership. Set in a nunnery in the Himalayas, it dealt with two of her recurring themes, obsessive love and the clash of Indian and European views of life. She returned to England after World War II, though India continued to feature in novels such as Coromandel Sea Change (1991). The religious life recurs in In This House of Brede (1969) and Five for Sorrow, Ten for Joy (1979).

Her sympathetic understanding of childhood appears first in Breakfast with the Nikolides (1942), the first of several novels in which the central character is a child. Children are also central in The River (1946; (filmed in 1951 by the French director Jean Renoir). She published two volumes of autobiography: A Time to Dance, No Time to Weep (1987), and A House with Four Rooms (1989).