Intro to Green Dolphin Street

What is a Green Dolphin? Three Strands of the Soul and Guernsey

Green Dolphin Street (the same as Green Dolphin Country) by Elizabeth Goudge.

“The sight of (St Pierre) under the early morning sun almost took his breath away. The tall houses rising above the wharf and the long line of the harbor wall, up and up, one behind the other climbing the steep hillside, seemed to have absorbed the colors of the morning into their very stone, so that St. Pierre looked like a city built of gold and mother-of-pearl... Ramparts of golden cloud, built up behind and around the farthest climbing roofs of the town, we’re like a second city in the sky… But both of them were reflected in the water of the harbor and reality inflection together made up a perfect circle a habitable globe in miniature, the city of man completely encircled by the city of God, the flawless, shining thing of which God dreamed when he made the world.”

🌿 Elizabeth Goudge, Green Dolphin Street

Welcome to our September read, Green Dolphin Street

Whether you have a copy of the book with its UK title (Green Dolphin Country) or the US title (Green Dolphin Street) I think you will find as Goudge did that the “old Dolphin” will be a winner for you this month! In fact, Goudge’s novel has many titles, as it was published all over Europe in the 1940’s.

According to Beyond the Snow by Christine Rawlins:

“It was 1944. The book she had been writing - finished at last - was published in September, and it turned her world upside down. Green Dolphin Country, also known as Green Dolphin Street, Le Pays du Dauphin Vert, Der Grune Delphin, Il Delfino Verde, El Pais del Delfin Verde, Het land van de Groene Dolfin, U Zeleneho Delfina... It was a phenomenal worldwide bestseller, and according to her obituary in The Daily Telegraph sold more than a million copies.”¹

And no one was more surprised about her sudden success than Goudge herself. Many years later, Goudge wrote in her autobiography:

“We laughed a great deal, but I am afraid I laughed less than the others because I was caught in the terrible coils of the most marvellous piece of material good fortune. Overnight I had become a best-seller.”

Join us for a look at the location where the novel setting in Guernsey, Evelyn Underhill’s three strands of the soul, Ruth in French, Le Paradise and… What is a green dolphin anyway?

“A rambler’s paradise - Guernsey’s wild and rugged coast boasts over 42 miles of walking trails with the southerly cliff paths covering 28 miles from La Vallette to Pleinmont. South coast cliffs, Guernsey” Caption by Visit Guernsey and Photo by Cheryl Anne