Intro to Gentian Hill

Our Goudge Readalong for January 2025

Gentian Hill by Elizabeth Goudge is our Goudge Readalong for January

“On a clear August evening, borne upon the light breath of a fair wind, the fleet was entering Torbay. The sight was so lovely that the men and women in the fishing villages grouped about the bay gazed in wonder, and stilled the busyness of their lives for a moment to stand and watch... to imprint this picture upon their memories so deeply that it should be for them a treasure while life should last. Since England had been at war with Napoleonic France, the fleet was often in Torbay.”

🌿 Elizabeth Goudge, Gentian Hill

Welcome to the January Goudge Readalong: Gentian Hill!

Gentian Hill is a pastoral tale set in rural Devon, a harrowing tale of the high seas during war, and a love story through and through. It was published just one year after Goudge’s post-war novel Pilgrim’s Inn (The Herb of Grace), but it takes a step back in time for its setting to the early 1800’s.

As the historical note at the beginning of the book says, St Michael’s Chapel at Torquay roots the story to a historical place. Goudge dreamed and wrote her Napoleonic story on the coast of Devon while she lived there with her ailing mother during World War II in the 1940’s.

Summary from the back jacket copy of the UK edition:

“Gentian Hill: A NOVEL OF DEVON IN THE DAYS OF NELSON

Every delight Elizabeth Goudge has to offer as a novelist is here. This story takes in its stride a delectable country setting; characters who do not yield an inch of their English way of life for all the threats of "Boney"; genuine, stirring adventure at sea with Nelson's Fleet; the danger and squalor of early 19th century London ; the strange and beautiful romance of Stella, the living child taken from the arms of her dead mother after the wreck of the Amphion — colour, contrast, idyllic peace, excitement.

Devon history and legend and folklore are as real to Elizabeth Goudge as the daily life she lives there. No one who has read Gentian Hill could go to Torbay without remembering her picture of the English Fleet sailing in at sunset; visit Cockington without thinking of the white witch, Granny Bogan: or fail to look in the green country behind Paignton for the site of Weekaborough Farm, home of the lovely Stella.”

Join us for an adventure that includes both the high seas and a cozy farmhouse this month…

“Built upon its summit was the Chapel of St. Michael, the goal of the pilgrimage. Gulls circled about it and it was so old and weatherworn that it seemed a part of the rock upon which it towered, and strangely lost in the midst of the peaceful pastoral landscape. It would have looked more at home, Zachary thought, on a rock in the middle of the sea. Yet it was a fitting shrine to have been built by a seaman who had been saved from death in a storm, and a fitting place of pilgrimage for other seamen who were holding their lives in their hands in days of peril…”

🌿 Elizabeth Goudge, Gentian Hill

Gentian Hill’s end papers & real locations

I’ve included the end papers here from my UK Hodder & Stoughton edition, and also their real life locations of these illustrations in Devon: