How did you discover Goudge?
Origin tales for the readers of our favorite lady
We each have our story…
our mother’s hand-me-down books, our grandmother’s insistence that we try; our stumbling in to pretty Goudge hardbacks at a rummage sale; our seeing her name over & over on Instagram.
Everyone seems to have a memorable moment when they were first aware of Elizabeth Goudge. For some of us, it was like a whole new literary world had opened up.
In 2015, one of my favorite homeschooling books, Teaching from Rest by Sarah MacKenzie, mentioned Elizabeth Goudge. My local library happened to have a few of her novels, and a couple of her volumes of short stories, so I started there. I first read her book of short stories, A Christmas Book, and was immediately hooked. Christmas takes a special place in many of Goudge’s tales. (A bit of history: Her father was heavily influenced by the Oxford movement, which was a group of clergy and intellectuals that reasserted the truths of the literal incarnation of Jesus. And then later the King George VI suggested that the British public try to be extra Christmasy during the dark years of WWII and Goudge seems to have taken this as a personal challenge to add a Christmas scene in as many of her novels as possible!)
Back in print
Goudge was just coming back into print eight years ago, so it was still difficult for me to find many of her books. Thankfully now it is much easier to find her novels! They are currently in paperback with Hendrickson in the US, and Hodder Books and Girls Gone By Publishers in the UK. I bought my first Goudge book, Gentian Hill, in 2016 and I very soon decided that I would try to find and read all that I could have her varied works. I’ve now read all of her published novels and short stories - nearly 40 books - multiple times, and have read through her prayer book over the course of a year’s time. I've read her autobiography, The Joy of the Snow, and also the wonderful biography, Beyond the Snow, recently written by Christine Rawlins. One of her books that does not get enough attention is her brilliant narrative biography of the life of Jesus. God So Loved the World has not been reprinted yet, but I certainly should be someday! It’s a brilliant book.
Deeply personal reading
Reading Goudge’s books can feel like a deeply personal experience. I’ve encountered many people who adore her books almost to the point of not being able to talk about them. Many people love Goudge’s books so deeply! She has a way of putting things that causes her words to suddenly jump off the page and speak to a deep or even hidden part of the soul. I do not think I’ve ever read one of her books without having had a sort of transcendent moment of realization, or sometimes even an answer to prayer.
This sort of life from that page of Goudge’s books is fascinating because Goudge herself was committed to the idea of God’s holy spirit being a transcendent light beyond what we see, which bursts through in unexpected moments. She often gives her own characters that experience in her books! So it's fascinating that this experience seems to also often come to her readers.
Complete Goudge Read-Alongs on Substack:
Thanks for musing on our different roads to Goudge’s work! I’d love to hear how you found Goudge’s books, and how they have spoken to you over the years.
*Includes a couple of Amazon affiliate links.
I didn't answer the poll because I found my first Goudge book in my high school library. It was called The City of Bells and I picked it solely based on the title. I feel in love with her writing and could barely stand ending the book. I went back and read all they all at the high school, then went to our town's public library and read all they had. I still haven't read every one of them but I had picked up multiples of hardback copies over the years, sometimes finding them stuck back in a pile of gritty books.
My time with EG goes back to the early 1970s, when EG was still alive. I had earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Oklahoma State University and had a teaching certificate but was working in an office in another state while my then-husband was in graduate school. We went through some rough times from which the marriage seemed to recover. In support, a coworker gave me The Child from the Sea, then a newly published book. After that, I read every book by EG on which I could get my hands. At that time, EG was being relegated to the Romance section of bookstores. My Aunt Mary, an exact contemporary of EG (birth year and death year), was so pleased. Aunt Mary sent me used paperbacks that she found in used bookstores. She spoke with sadness about deteriorating modern times when a writer like Goudge was allowed to disappear as people seemed to turn to nihilism.
I accumulated all her writings and moved them from home to home. I shared a few with friends. I made my husband read A Bird in the Tree with the hope that we would forgive each other and have a stronger marriage as a result. He responded, “I see why you wanted me to read the book. It was obviously written by an old lady. It was written by Lucilla. It would have turned out differently if it had been written by David.” [I am sharing this as an example of EG’s importance in my life – I do have a marvelously supportive husband now who shares the values of discipline and working from the outside in.]
I shared The Child from the Sea with my Episcopal priest, who returned it without comment – presumably having read a few pages. I shared The Scent of Water with a friend who returned it after reading a few pages: “She really does go into description, doesn’t she?” I shared the Eliot trilogy with a young mother who loved her own children tremendously and loved birds – the books remained on a shelf in her home unread. It seemed EG was no longer relevant.
Please know how much I appreciate this group for engaging with this superb author and encouraging others to do so, thereby helping the books of Elizabeth Goudge to be printed once again and bring their wisdom to us.