13 Mar 18 - 07:19 PM (#3910942) Subject: BS: the books of Elizabeth Goudge From: keberoxu ach, the Mudcat doesn't like me at the moment. I posted an initial post, submitted it, and the monster ate it up. Tiring. Some of Elizabeth Goudge's historical fiction novels: The Dean's Watch The White Witch Green Dolphin Street (made into a period-costume feature film) The Middle Window (Scotland and Culloden) Pilgrim Inn and one work of C.S. Lewis-style fantasy: The Little White Horse |
14 Mar 18 - 12:25 AM (#3910964) Subject: RE: BS: the books of Elizabeth Goudge From: JennieG I remember reading one of her books a very very long time ago, but can't remember which one it was! Green Dolphin Street is ringing a dim distant bell. It was a long time ago, after all...... |
14 Mar 18 - 09:23 AM (#3911019) Subject: RE: BS: the books of Elizabeth Goudge From: keberoxu One of Elizabeth Goudge's great loves was the Channel Islands, and several books feature those Islands. Green Dolphin Street is one of those books. It's an adventure, and so it's not limited to the islands: it travels by clipper to New Zealand in the era when the English were just colonizing the place. Moreover, there is the homage to Mont-Saint-Michel in the form of a fictitious convent at the top of an enormous cliff which, at high tide, is accessible only by seacraft if memory serves. One of the characters scales the cliff bare-handed. When Green Dolphin Street was made into a movie, with both English and American stars in the cast, the cliff-climbing scene was a very big deal in the film; people who have seen the film (not me) recall the suspense. |
14 Mar 18 - 12:25 PM (#3911049) Subject: RE: BS: the books of Elizabeth Goudge From: Rapparee They were very popular back in the '70s. We always needed multiple copies. |
16 Mar 18 - 06:51 PM (#3911483) Subject: RE: BS: the books of Elizabeth Goudge From: keberoxu J. K. Rowling, who wrote the Harry Potter books, is widely quoted about the children's fantasy books that inspired her and which she admires; The Little White Horse, by Elizabeth Goudge, is one of them. I am getting my branch library to borrow a copy for me, as I have yet to read it. The Little White Horse appears to be children's fantasy in the sense of C.S. Lewis's Narnia books. Multiple editions have kept it in print, and more than once the book has been adapted for television. |
18 Mar 18 - 06:52 AM (#3911611) Subject: RE: BS: the books of Elizabeth Goudge From: Mo the caller I seem to remember from the late 60s that a lot of her books were mystical-religious-telepathic, the way I wished the world was, rather than the way I thought it was. Which was the one about the girl with the nasty teacher and the bomber pilot? |
18 Mar 18 - 06:53 AM (#3911612) Subject: RE: BS: the books of Elizabeth Goudge From: Mo the caller ....the one about the girl with the nasty teacher and the bomber pilot and a dog called Mouse |
18 Mar 18 - 07:13 AM (#3911617) Subject: RE: BS: the books of Elizabeth Goudge From: Mo the caller Ah yes, I'm thinking about the Eliot trilogy Bird in the Tree Herb of Grace Heart of the Family full list here |
18 Mar 18 - 11:40 AM (#3911670) Subject: RE: BS: the books of Elizabeth Goudge From: keberoxu Dogs! Elizabeth Goudge treated family dogs as attentively as she treated the human characters in her books. The dog called Mouse is a little gray Cairn terrier. I think a female? She lives with the Eliot family. But she shows up only in book 3 of the Eliot group of books. The first two Eliot books feature two aging dogs called Pooh-Bah and The Bastard. The Eliot family includes the bomber pilot, and you are right, he is in book 3. "The Heart of the Family" is the title of Book 3 as you posted. Actually he is an Eliot, the pilot, and as an Eliot he is in all three books; but in The Bird in the Tree, the first of the Eliot books, he has yet to serve in the armed forces. Now, then: the nasty teacher. This sounds like a different Elizabeth Goudge title, "The Rosemary Tree," about a private school for girls whose headmistress dies after an illness; one of the nasty teachers is confronted by the parent of two sister students. Because the parent is the local vicar, he not only confronts the nasty teacher but forces a conversion experience and a penance! |
18 Mar 18 - 11:46 AM (#3911672) Subject: RE: BS: the books of Elizabeth Goudge From: keberoxu If katlaughing were still with us, she would reiterate some of her old posts on older Mudcat threads, in which she sang the praises of an Elizabeth Goudge novel. "The White Witch" is the name of katlaughing's favored book. I have yet to read this one. The setting is Cromwell's England, when "witches" were burned at the stake. Another Mudcat member was partial to "The Middle Window," which was made into a television film in Germany, called "Das Mittlere Fenster." This historical novel examined reincarnation. The more historical part of the novel took place in Scotland at the time of Culloden; the reincarnated souls were reborn in the 20th century. |
18 Mar 18 - 04:03 PM (#3911726) Subject: RE: BS: the books of Elizabeth Goudge From: Mo the caller I think you are right,it's a long time since I read them. |
19 Mar 18 - 06:17 PM (#3911932) Subject: RE: BS: the books of Elizabeth Goudge From: keberoxu Cathedral towns are also settings of Elizabeth Goudge books, as Goudge began her childhood in a cathedral town. One of these cathedral novels is The Dean's Watch, the subject of posts on old threads by Mudcatter McGrath of Harlow -- he seems not to be posting lately. |
20 Mar 18 - 01:35 PM (#3912083) Subject: RE: BS: the books of Elizabeth Goudge From: keberoxu I hope to spend the next blizzard (due tomorrow) curled up with a circulating library copy of The Little White Horse, by Elizabeth Goudge. |
22 Mar 18 - 12:50 PM (#3912492) Subject: RE: BS: the books of Elizabeth Goudge From: keberoxu Sat down yesterday to read The Little White Horse for the first time. It's easy to see why this book has such a good reputation decades after it was published. The writing is exceptional, well-thought and deliberate. The mythology is familiar and magical. The characters are delineated in loving detail. The animals, whether mundane or magical, are characters in their own right. More than one television/film adaptation exists of this book; the book remains better known, and better regarded, than the attempts to adapt it for television. Don't want to spoil it, but suffice to say that the little white horse is something much more than a horse. |
23 Mar 18 - 07:33 PM (#3912800) Subject: RE: BS: the books of Elizabeth Goudge From: keberoxu Having reflections and second thoughts on The Little White Horse. In some respects, this children's fantasy by Elizabeth Goudge is a throwback to the nineteenth-century Aberdeenshire native, George MacDonald, he of The Princess and the Goblins and The Princess and Curdie, among numerous other children's books. I say "throwback" because of the emphasis on nobility, aristocracy, and royalty. MacDonald had some wonderful Wise Woman characters, a breakthrough of Jungian proportions in those days; but every growing girl had to be a Princess, it seemed, in his children's books. Growing girls had to be exalted to be protagonists. And so it is in The Little White Horse, in which the newly-orphaned young lady, with her governess, goes to the land of her ancestors and finds that there, she is next in line to the throne. Which means that now, with her exalted status, she is qualified to be the protagonist in her own history. This kind of fabulous exalted princess thing has its place, and yet it really has been done to death. With the changing times and mores, the young lady who need not be exalted in order to make a difference is more forward-looking, more promising for the future. |