The Joy of the Snow: Week 3

Tracing Elizabeth Goudge's Journey through Oxford and Barton

View from the Dean's Garden, Christ Church, Oxford by William Turner of Oxford

“Essentially Oxford never changes. Old shops and dwelling houses may be swept away… but the essential Oxford is what it always was, a power house of the knowledge for which men are always searching.”

🌿 Elizabeth Goudge, The Joy of the Snow

UPDATE: We will be having our book chat for The Joy of the Snow next week on TUESDAY, June 24th at 3PM EST instead of Wednesday. Hope to see you there! Link will go out on Monday.

Oxford & Barton

Elizabeth Goudge may not have climbed the highest mountains or lived among movie stars, but she certainly lived in some beautiful places! Our reading this week in The Joy of the Snow in chapters 8-10 follows her family’s journey into the last “city of bells”—Oxford.

In our chapters this week, we can hear the sadness about having to leave Ely in Goudge’s account, and maybe especially because when she was writing her autobiography in the 1970’s she knew all of the illness that would await her mother in Oxford. But there were huge perks to being in Oxford as well. Goudge was close to one of the world's best libraries, the Bodleian, to aid her in her early research. Being surround by the historic city of Oxford clearly furnished her mind with ample material for the coming years, and especially for her early novel, Towers in the Mist.

Join me today for a pictorial look at Goudge’s life in Oxford and Barton, a map of her journey across England, and also a map of her faith:

Oxford, Christ Church, Tom Quad