Home - Welcome to your Elizabeth Goudge web site.
Elizabeth Goudge was a remarkable human being as well as a popular writer of novels, children's books, dramas, poetry and non-fiction. This web site is dedicated to bringing you information about this author, the places she lived and where she set her novels and short stories. My hope is that you will enjoy your visit and that you will return as new pages and photos are added. (I have just moved servers and so it will take awhile to add all the items on file.)
Elizabeth Goudge was born in Wells, England on April 24, 1900. She was the first and only child of Ida Collenette and Henry Leighton Goudge. Elizabeth wrote, "No child can have lived in lovlier homes than my first two home or in a lovlier city than Wells at the beginning of the century." As a child, Elizabeth spent her summers on Gurnsey, in the Channel Islands where her maternal grandparents lived. InBecause of poor health, her mother did not often make the trip which in those days was rather daunting.
In 1911 her father was transferred from the Cathedral at Wells to the Cathedral in Ely in North East England. Ely Cathedral stands at the highest point of a mount arising from the fens ('black dirt' land from drained swamp land). It is an impressive site as you approach Ely on the train.
Becoming a writer. Goudge was drawn to story telling even as a child but her parents thought she needed something practical, so she could be assured of earning a living. She attended the University at Reading for two years and studied handcraft arts. After returning from Reading she taughthandcrafts to local women.
Elizabeth Goudge's first book was a children's title, Fairie Babies and Other Stories and it was a great failure. It sold so few copies that Elizabeth gave up writing for some time and devoted herself to teaching the applied arts of handicrafts (weaving,leather work and embroidery). Some year's later she wrote Island Magic, a work of short stories set in Guernsey. This book was enough of a success to start her on her way and a flood of successful novels and short stories followed. (published in England as Green Dolphin Country) and in 1947 she received the Carnegie Medal for The Little White Horse. This book is the book which J.C. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, said was her favorite as a child.
In 1944 she received the MGM Literary Award and the Literary Guild Award for Green Dolphin Street In Goudge's last years she edited a series of anthologies that reveal the depth and breadth of her own reading and study. The Joy of the Snow is her autobiography and it includes many of the sources of her inspiration and work. A recent work that offers insight into Goudge's life and writings is Sylvia Gower's The World of Elizabeth Goudge published in 2000.
I trust you will enjoy your visit to this site and that you will return to read additional pages over the next weeks.
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