Every Least Thing

by Rumer Godden

English 480 pages 1 edition

India is not simply the setting of Rumer Godden’s childhood. It is the landscape that shaped her imagination, her sense of home and her life as a writer. Bringing together selections from Godden’s autobiographical writing, Every Least Thing traces her journey from an unconventional childhood in Bengal to marriage, motherhood, work and the difficult beginnings of her literary career. It follows her through family homes and convent schools, dance classes and tea gardens, periods of hardship and solitude, and the years in which writing gradually became both vocation and escape. Intimate, vivid and sharply observed, these pages reveal the experiences behind some of Godden’s best-loved fiction, while also recording a world transformed by time, memory and history. They form the portrait of a woman learning to make a life on her own terms, and of a writer whose connection to India endured long after she had left it. Every Least Thing is a moving account of childhood, belonging and creative awakening, and of the country that remained central to Rumer Godden’s inner life.