[3] Her parents sent the girls to England for schooling, as was the custom of the time, but brought them back to Narayanganj when the First World War began.

In 1942, after eight years in an unhappy marriage (one she entered into in 1934 because she was pregnant),[3] she moved with her two daughters, Jane and Paula,[4] (her husband Laurence Foster having joined the army)[3] to Kashmir, living first on a houseboat and then in a rented house where she started a farm.

[3] After returning from America to oversee the script for the movie of her book The River, Godden married civil servant James Haynes Dixon on 26 November 1949.

In Five for Sorrow, Ten for Joy and In This House of Brede she acutely examined the balance between the mystical, spiritual aspects of religion and the practical, human realities of religious life.

A number of Godden's novels are set in India, the atmosphere of which she evokes through all the senses; her writing is vivid with detail of smells, textures, light, flowers, noises and tactile experiences.