Rosemary SutcliffCBE (14 December 1920 – 23 July 1992) was an English novelist best known for children's books, especially historical fiction and retellings of myths and legends. Although she was primarily a children's author, some of her novels were specifically written for adults. In a 1986 interview she said, "I would claim that my books are for children of all ages, from nine to ninety."[1]
Sutcliff was born 14 December 1920 to George Ernest Sutcliff and his wife Nessie Elizabeth, née Lawton, in East Clandon, Surrey.[4] She spent her childhood in Malta and various naval bases where her father, a Royal Navy officer, was stationed. She was affected by Still's disease when she was very young, and used a wheelchair most of her life. Due to her chronic illness, Sutcliff spent most of her time with her mother from whom she learned many of the Celtic and Saxonlegends that she would later expand into works of historical fiction. Sutcliff's early schooling was constantly interrupted by moving house and her illness. She did not learn to read until she was nine years of age, and left school at age 14 to enter the Bideford Art School, which she attended for three years, graduating from the General Art Course. Sutcliff then worked as a painter of miniatures.
The South Downs near Sutcliff's long-time home in Sussex and the setting of several of her novels.
Inspired by the children's historical novels of Geoffrey Trease, her first published book was The Chronicles of Robin Hood in 1950. In 1954, she published what remains her best-known work The Eagle of the Ninth, part of a series on Roman Britain and its aftermath; they were not written as such or in sequential order but connected by the linking device of an emerald ring, passed down through generations of the same family. Between 1954 and 1958, Sutcliff's works The Eagle of the Ninth, its sequel The Silver Branch, Outcast and Warrior Scarlet were runners-up in the annual Carnegie Medal, given by the Library Association to the year's best children's book by a British subject. She finally won the Medal for her third book in the Eagle series, The Lantern Bearers (1959).[5][6][a] Where the first two books and one subsequent one were set in Roman Britain, The Lantern Bearers immediately follows the withdrawal of the Roman Empire, when the British people are threatened by remaining Germanic troops and by invaders.
Sutcliff lived for many years in Walberton near Arundel, Sussex. In 1975, she was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for services to children's literature, and later Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1992. She wrote incessantly throughout her life and was still doing so on the morning of her death in 1992.[7] Sutcliff never married and had no children.
Books
Autobiography
Blue Remembered Hills: A recollection (1983); Sutcliff's memoir of her childhood and young adulthood.
Other non-fiction
Houses and History (London: Batsford, 1960), illustrated by William Stobbs
A Saxon Settler (People of the Past, 1965), illus. John Lawrence
Eagle of the Ninth series
The series, also referred to as 'Marcus',[8] is linked by the Aquila family dolphin ring and listed here in fictional chronological order. (They were not written as a series by the author.)
‡ Three Legions (1980), or Eagle of the Ninth Chronicles (2010), is an omnibus edition of the original Eagle of the Ninth trilogy (The Eagle of the Ninth, The Silver Branch and The Lantern Bearers, 1954 to 1959).
Arthurian novels
Raymond Thompson credits Sutcliff with "some of the finest contemporary recreations of the Arthurian story" and names these seven works.[1] The first two are also part of the Eagle of the Ninth series (above) that attempt to depict Arthur as an actual historical figure.
Bridge Builders (1960), illus. Douglas Relf, about the building of Hadrian's Wall. Originally published as a short story in Another Six (Another 6): Stories by Richard Armstrong, William Mayne, Noel Streatfeild, Patricia Lynch, A. Philippa Pearce, Rosemary Sutcliff. UK: Blackwell, 1959.
Heather, Oak, and Olive (1972), illus. Victor Ambrus; a collection of three dramatic stories: "The Chief's Daughter", "A Circlet of Oak Leaves", and "A Crown of Wild Olive" (originally published as "The Truce of the Games")
We Lived in Drumfyvie (1975), by Sutcliff and Margaret Lyford-Pike. "The authors combine their talents to recreate 700 years in the life of an imaginary Scottish burgh. The folk of Drumfyvie tell their own stories. "
The Best of Rosemary Sutcliff (1987), illus. Charles Keeping—omnibus edition of Warrior Scarlet, The Mark of the Horse Lord, and Knight's Fee (1958–1965)
The Rider of the White Horse (1959); set during the 17th-century English Civil War, about Parliamentarian general Sir Thomas Fairfax and his wife Anne who travelled on campaign with him
Ghost Story. Film. Screenplay with Stephen Weeks and Philip Norman, 1974.
Mary Bedell. Stage play. Produced London, 1986.
The Eagle of the Ninth. Stage play with Mary Rensten.
Articles
"History Is People". A paper distributed at a conference on Children's Literature in Education, Exeter, England, 1971. Reprinted in Children and Literature: Views and Reviews, edited by Virginia Haviland, pp. 305–312 Scott, Foresman 1973, pp. 305–312
"Combined Ops". Junior Bookshelf 24 (July 1960):121–27. Reprinted in Egoff, Only Connect: Readings on Children's Literature, 1st ed., pp. 244–48; 2d ed., pp. 284–88. Describes the process of writing Eagle of the Ninth and The Lantern Bearers.
Collected papers
In 1966 Sutcliff made a small donation to the de Grummond Children's Literature Collection at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. (In this she responded to Lena Grummond's international call for original materials to establish the Collection.) The Sutcliff Papers include a manuscript and two typescripts for the radio play The New Laird. That programme was taped 4 April 1966 and broadcast from Edinburgh on 17 May 1966 as part of the Stories from Scottish History series (BBC Radio Scotland). The collection also includes a small red composition book of research notes for The Lantern Bearers and for two unpublished works, The Amber Dolphin and The Red Dragon.[4]
Works about Sutcliff
Margaret Meek, Rosemary Sutcliff, New York, Henry Z. Walck, (1962), a brief biographical monograph and critical study.
John Rowe Townsend, "Rosemary Sutcliff", a critical essay in A Sense of Story: Essays on Contemporary Writers for Children, London, Longman, 1971, pp. 193–99. Reissued as A Sounding of Storytellers (1979).
Barbara L. Talcroft, Death of the Corn King: King and Goddess in Rosemary Sutcliff's Historical Novels for Young Adults, Metuchen, New Jersey and London: The Scarecrow Press, 1995.
Miriam Youngerman Miller, "The Rhythm of a Tongue: Literary Dialect in Rosemary Sutcliff's Novels of the Middle Ages for Children", Children's Literature Association Quarterly 19:1, Spring 1994, pp. 25–31.
Hilary Wright, Shadows on the Downs: Some Influences of Rudyard Kipling on Rosemary Sutcliff. Children's Literature in Education 12, No. 2:90-102 (Summer 1981)
The Search for Selfhood: The Historical Novels of Rosemary Sutcliff. TLS : Essays and Reviews from the Times Literary Supplement, 17 June 1965, p. 498. Reprinted in Only Connect: Readings on children's literature, ed. Sheila Egoff et al. Toronto New York: Oxford University Press (Canadian Branch), 1969, pp. 249–255.
Abby Mims, Rosemary Sutcliff in British Writers: Supplement 16. Ed. Jay Parini. Detroit: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2010. Web: Gale Literature Resource Center.
^ abSince 1995 there are usually eight books on the Carnegie shortlist.
According to CCSU some runners up through 2002 were Commended (from 1954) or Highly Commended (from 1966). There were about 160 commendations of both kinds in 49 years including six each for 1954, 1956, and 1957; three each for 1958 and 1971 (none highly commended).
^The Capricorn Bracelet (1973) is a collection of six inter-connected short stories, following several generations of Roman soldiers serving at Hadrian's Wall from the 1st to the 4th centuries. In the author's note Sutcliff says that they began as scripts about Roman Scotland, written for BBC Radio Scotland as part of a series called Stories from Scottish History. She gives no dates; the series ran from 1947 to 1972.
^ abcde"Interview with Rosemary Sutcliff" (August 1986). Raymond H. Thompson. Taliesin's Successors: Interviews with authors of modern Arthurian literature. The Camelot Project at the University of Rochester. Retrieved 2012-11-19. This interview was undertaken for the periodical Avalon to Camelot; it inspired Thompson to undertake the series of 36.
Sutcliff's Roman Britain novels reviewed by Eric Eller at The Green Man Review – provides synopses and discusses the series in the context of place and chronological setting
The Best of Rosemary Sutcliff (1987), illus. Charles Keeping—omnibus edition of Warrior Scarlet, The Mark of the Horse Lord, and Knight's Fee (1958–1965)
