George Stanley Godwin

Childhood and youth

George S. Godwin was born in London, England, the youngest boy of a large family and was only three years old when his father died. He was educated at boarding schools. Failing his studies at college he spent a couple of years in Germany. After returning to England Godwin reportedly worked briefly for a German bank in England. In the spring of 1909 he was admitted to membership of the Middle Temple and started studying law. His mother died in 1910.

Whonnock Years

In September 1911 Godwin, then age 22, left for British Columbia, Canada where one of his brothers managed a real estate agency. George Godwin was employed as “real estate broker” with the agency but that ended with the arrival of his future wife, Dorothy Alicia Purdon from Ireland. They married in the spring of 1912 and moved to acreage in Whonnock BC. Godwin’s dreams of living off the land did not materialize. George Godwin first novel, The Eternal Forest (1929) was inspired by his years in Whonnock.

War years

At the outbreak of the First World War, Godwin wanted to join the Canadian armed forces, but was rejected for active service because of poor eyesight. He returned with his wife and son to England in 1915, where he joined the Canadian Expeditionary Force after all and embarked for France in September 1916 with the 29th Vancouver Battalion. In the summer of 1917, after suffering a “severe cold” in France the previous winter, Godwin was hospitalized in England. He did not return to France but was assigned to a different Canadian unit in Britain. In December 1918, diagnosed with pulmonary tuberculosis, he was shipped to Canada and placed in the Balfour Military Sanatorium in the West Kootenay, BC, for recovery. Godwin returned to England and his family in the summer of 1920. Godwin’s second novel Why Stay We Here? (1932), closely follows Godwin’s own war years. This book starts and ends at the same community described in The Eternal Forest, but the characters from that novel going to war don’t share life overseas together with the protagonist.’

Freelancer, Author, and Publisher

Although Godwin was called to the bar in the fall of 1917 (in absentia) he did not pursue a career in law. During his stay In British Columbia he had freelanced for Vancouver, BC newspapers and upon his return to England writing became his profession. He made a good income mostly as freelance for newspapers, magazines and publicity people. That allowed the family some luxury and his five children the education they desired. Aside from freelancing, the main source of his income, Godwin wrote a good number of fiction and non-fiction books. His efforts in publishing, started in the mid 1930s under the style The Acorn Press, ended because of the paper shortage of the war years. Godwin tried to enlist with the army, was rejected, but found employment writing for the War Office.

After the Second World War

Godwin resumed his work as a writer and freelancer. Starting in the fall of 1949 he was for a year the editor of the literary quarterly The Adelphi. Godwin and his wife spent their final years in Sussex in a house that combined two old cottages with a modern extension. Their property included seven acres of woodland as well as an established orchard. Godwin continued writing and had plans for another book but that did not materialize. His last book was published in 1957.