Her mother, Katherine Norah Hingley Godden, came from a family of successful iron and steel manufacturers. When she was six months old, Godden's parents took her to India, where she remained until she was five. In 1913 her parents sent her and her older sister, Jon, back to England to be reared by their paternal grandmother and their aunt. During this period Godden was confronted for the first time with the differences between the indulged and almost princely life of Europeans in India and the strict, pious life of a traditional English home. The danger of raids in London precipitated the return of the sisters to India in November 1914.
Godden has described her childhood in India as "halcyon." As children she and her sisters were accustomed to making books--not simply writing stories but actually trimming the pages and sewing them together. Her only formal education in India was during the summer months when the family escaped the heat at various hill-country resorts. When she and her sisters were sent to school in England in 1920, the halcyon days were over. Godden attended five different schools in two years, finally completing her education at Moira House in Sussex, an unconventional school where she found "peace and opportunity" to write under the direction of her teacher and friend, Mona Swann.
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