For award-winning, internationally-acclaimed author Rosemary Sutcliff (1920-92). By Anthony Lawton: godson, cousin & literary executor. Rosemary Sutcliff wrote historical fiction, children's literature and books, films, TV & radio, including The Eagle of the Ninth, Sword at Sunset, Song for a Dark Queen, The Mark of the Horse Lord, The Silver Branch, The Lantern Bearers, Dawn Wind, Blue Remembered Hills.
Rosemary Sutcliff often said that she ‘wrote books for children aged 8 to 88’.
… W.H. Auden wrote that ‘there are good books which are only for adults, because their comprehension presupposes adult experiences, but there are no good books which are only for children’. In this sense, it is natural for children’s books to become adult books if they are any good; since all adults have been children, books for and about children are always potentially for and about adults too. (Hugh Haughton)
3 thoughts on “There are no good books which are only for children”
[…] childhood; where the interest of innocence is to be placed between the two. W. H. Auden believed “there are good books which are only for adults, because their comprehension presupposes adult exp…In this sense, it’s natural for children’s books to become adult books if they are any good. […]
I like that! CS Lewis said something very similar in his essay “On three ways of writing for children” in the collection “Of this and other worlds” (edited by Walter Hooper, and published by Fount, 1984) – ‘I am almost inclined to set it up as a canon that a children’s story which is enjoyed only by children is a bad children’s story. The good ones last.’
Thank you Jane – this essay is complete news to me, as are all manner of things pointed out by some of you and other wonderfully knowledgeable enthusiasts for Rosemary who comment here.
ROSEMARY SUTCLIFF (1920-92) 
[…] childhood; where the interest of innocence is to be placed between the two. W. H. Auden believed “there are good books which are only for adults, because their comprehension presupposes adult exp…In this sense, it’s natural for children’s books to become adult books if they are any good. […]
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I like that! CS Lewis said something very similar in his essay “On three ways of writing for children” in the collection “Of this and other worlds” (edited by Walter Hooper, and published by Fount, 1984) – ‘I am almost inclined to set it up as a canon that a children’s story which is enjoyed only by children is a bad children’s story. The good ones last.’
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Thank you Jane – this essay is complete news to me, as are all manner of things pointed out by some of you and other wonderfully knowledgeable enthusiasts for Rosemary who comment here.
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