Rosemary Sutcliff

Biography

Sutcliff was born 14 December 1920 to George Ernest Sutcliff and his wife Nessie Elizabeth, née Lawton, in East Clandon, Surrey. She spent her childhood in Malta and various naval bases where her father, a Royal Navy officer, was stationed. She was stricken with Still's Disease when she was very young, and thus used a wheelchair most of her life. Due to her chronic illness, Sutcliff spent most of her time with her mother—a tireless storyteller—from whom she learned many of the Celtic and Saxon legends that she would later expand into works of historical fiction. Sutcliff's early schooling was constantly interrupted by moving house and her disabling condition. 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.

After being inspired by the children's historical novels of Geoffrey Trease, Sutcliff's first published book was The Chronicles of Robin Hood (1950). Her best-known book may be The Eagle of the Ninth (Oxford, 1954), which inaugurated a series sometimes called Marcus or simply The Eagle of the Ninth. For that first book and for its sequel The Silver Branch (1957), she was a commended runner-up for the annual Carnegie Medal from the Library Association, recognising the year's best children's book by a British subject. She was also both a 1956 and a 1958 runner up (thus four times in five years) before winning the Medal for the third Marcus book, The Lantern Bearers (1959). Where the first two books and one later 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 was Carnegie runner-up again for Tristan and Iseult (1971), retelling the Arthurian story of the same name; for that work she won the annual Horn Book Award in the United States. The Mark of the Horse Lord won the inaugural Phoenix Award in 1985, named by the Children's Literature Association the best English-language children's book that did not win a major award when it was originally published twenty years earlier. The Shining Company won the same award in 2010. It is named for the mythical bird phoenix, which is reborn from its ashes, to suggest the book's rise from obscurity.

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 was promoted to be a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1992. She wrote incessantly throughout her life and was still writing on the morning of her death in 1992. Sutcliff never married and had no children.

Autobiography

Other nonfiction

Eagle of the Ninth series

The series 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.)

1. The Eagle of the Ninth (1954), illus. C. Walter Hodges ‡
2. The Silver Branch (1957), illus. Charles Keeping ‡
3. Frontier Wolf (1980)
4. The Lantern Bearers (1959)
5. Sword at Sunset (1963); "officially for adults"
6. Dawn Wind (1961), illus. Charles Keeping
7. Sword Song (1997, posthumous)
8. The Shield Ring (1956), illus. C. Walter Hodges

‡ 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. The first two are also part of the Eagle of the Ninth series (above) that attempt to depict Arthur as an actual historical figure.

King Arthur Stories: Three books in one (1999), or The King Arthur Trilogy (2007), is an omnibus edition of the Arthurian Trilogy (1979 to 1981).

Other children's novels

Novels for adults

Plays and screenplays

Articles

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.

Works about Sutcliff

Awards

The biennial Hans Christian Andersen Award conferred by the International Board on Books for Young People is the highest recognition available to a writer or illustrator of children's books. Sutcliff was one of three runners-up for the writing award in 1974 (and the British nominee in 1968 as well).

She won several awards for particular works.

Besides winning the 1959 Carnegie Medal, Sutcliff was a commended runner-up five times. Alan Lee, who illustrated Sutcliff's posthumously published retellings of The Iliad and The Odyssey, won the companion Kate Greenaway Medal for the former, Black Ships Before Troy (1993).