[Manuscript account of 'A First Memory': one page hand-written account by Rumer Godden on her headed note paper, plus a signed postcard addressed to Jill Bernhardi. With:] First Memories of the Famous. Compiled and edited by Jill Bernhardi. Illustrated by Mark Wilde.

GODDEN, Rumer; BERNHARDI, Jill (editor)

Published by Coalville Publishing Company Ltd, n.l., 1996

About this Item

Three items relating to Rumer Godden's contribution to the Cancer Relief Macmillan fund-raising book, First Memories of the Famous (1996), comprising: an undated one-page hand-written account in blue ink on Godden's 'Ardnacloich, Moniaive'-headed paper: cream, laid paper with watermarks, printed in black, folded with a little creasing; one-line postcard, again on Godden's personal stationary, addressed to Jill Bernhardi, wondering: "Will this do?" and highlighting, "It is true"; plus, first edition of First Memories of the Famous: perfectly-bound paperback (21 x 14.8cm), pp. ix, [i], 68, incl. b/w illustrations. Glossy, illustrated paper wrappers. Gentlest edgewear, faint band of sunning to rear wrapper, else, clean and tight. Near fine A powerful and affecting first memory, penned in Rumer Godden's hand on her personal stationary and reproduced in the 1996 fund-raising book for Cancer Relief Macmillan, First Memories of the Famous, with a signed postcard; Godden's "very first memory [.] gave [her] a sign or a symbol I have managed to follow all my life": she recalls the gift of "a tiny doll sent to me by [her sister] Jon from England", which "is not like any other doll" [.] because "every time she is knocked over straight away and by herself she stands up again." Godden notes that despite now understanding the its mechanism, the doll "remains vivid because again and again I have been knocked over flat yet, yet mysteriously and by myself have managed to stand up again." A prolific and prize-winning novelist, of both children's and adult fiction, Rumer Godden (1907 1998) was in her late 80s and living in Dumfriesshire when she sketched this memory, which still "flashe[d] brilliantly clean". A fiercely independent woman "prickly and indomitable, always went her own way" Godden spent the first half of her life in colonial India, as the memory suggests. She trained as a dance teacher and in 1930 "to the alarm of her circle [.] she opened the Peggie Godden School of Dance in Calcutta [sic], where she unconventionally accepted both Indian and Eurasian pupils" (ODNB). Six years later, and briefly back in the UK, pregnant with her second child, she made her name with Black Narcissus (1939), later brought to the the screen by Powell and Pressburger in an adaptation apparently "much despised by Godden" (ibid). Later still, she moved to the UK and for a decade followed fellow authors Henry James and E F Benson in renting Lamb Cottage in Rye. Dolls also feature centrally in a number of Godden's best-loved children's books, including The Dolls' House (1947) and The Story of Holly and Ivy (1958).

Seller Inventory # 3179

Bibliographic Details

• Title: [Manuscript account of 'A First Memory': one page hand-written account by Rumer Godden on her headed note paper, plus a signed postcard addressed to Jill Bernhardi. With:] First Memories of the Famous. Compiled and edited by Jill Bernhardi. Illustrated by Mark Wilde.
• Publisher: Coalville Publishing Company Ltd, n.l.
• Publication Date: 1996
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Near Fine
• Seller catalogs:
  • Signed & Association Copies
  • Ephemera