Intro to The Rosemary Tree

Our April 2024 Goudge Readalong

The Rosemary Tree by Elizabeth Goudge

“Birds were more satisfactory symbols of the heavenly spirits, Harriet thought, than any of those sentimental angels that one saw in the children's picture books. There was nothing so swift and free as a bird. Yet crippled though she was she felt nothing but joy in watching them. She had always known how to wait.”

🌳 Elizabeth Goudge, The Rosemary Tree

Beginning with Harriet

The Rosemary Tree is like many of Goudge’s adult novels—a story of a quiet, ordinary English village and its inhabitants. But set within this bucolic countryside exists also a battle between good and evil of epic proportions. And in the quiet center of this stormy battle, sits Harriet “at her window watch(ing) the gulls with delight.”¹

Birds in the Devon sky. Photo by by Chris Iversen Photography who says of this location:“Looking towards the South Devon village of Thurlestone”

The setting

The Rosemary Tree is set near the coast in Devon, and though we are not given the exact location, it is likely close to the locations of many of her other Devon books. The Castle on the Hill, The Little White Horse, Gentian Hill and Linnets & Valerians are all set in Devon, and easily located in the areas surrounding Goudge’s 1940’s home in Marldon, UK. The Rosemary Tree was her last adult book set in Devon, and Linnets & Valerians her last children’s book.

The Cast

The characters are largely from the Wentworth family, a local school, and a local estate, with a handful of memorable animals thrown in as well. You can read a burb from the publisher about them here in the US edition: