Category: Criticism, Reviews, Research, Awards

Posts on rosemarysutcliff.com, Rosemary Sutcliff’s official website, about Literary Criticism, Reviews and Research about her; and about national and international Awards she received.

Rosemary Sutcliff had the eye of a painter of miniatures

Anthony Lawton3 Comments

Rosemary Sutcliff crafted her historical novel The Eagle of the Ninth from two starting points: a small bronze eagle found at Silchester, which is now in Reading Museum; and the unknown fate of the Roman Ninth Legion, which, based in York, had apparently vanished from the historical record in the early years of the 2nd century. Written, as always, “for children aged 8 to 88” The Eagle of the Ninth is about a young centurion, Marcus Aquila, who takes up his first command on the edges of the Roman empire in south-west Britain. Severely injured during a fight with local warriors who have been inflamed by a travelling druid, he has to give up his military career. However, he  hears rumours of sightings of  the standard of his father’s lost legion – the eagle of the ninth –  north of Hadrian’s wall. He realises that if he can find it, he will restore the honour of his disgraced father and the legion he commanded.

Last year, at the time of the release of the film The Eagle, Charlotte Higgins, chief arts writer of The Guardian newspaper, wrote a long, affectionate article about her children’s favourite.

… In an interview in 1992, the year she died, she said: “I don’t write for adults, I don’t write for children. I don’t write for the outside world at all. Basically, I write for some small, inquiring thing in myself.” I have read The Eagle of the Ninth dozens of times; and as the reading self changes, so does the book. When I last read the story, it was the quality of the prose that delighted, the rightness with which Sutcliff gives life to physical sensation. A battle fought through the grey drizzle of a west country dawn is illuminated by “firebrands that gilded the falling mizzle and flashed on the blade of sword and heron-tufted war spear”. Read More »

The New York Public Library recommends historical fiction by Rosemary Sutcliff

Anthony Lawton2 Comments

Regular commenter on this blog about historical fiction and children’s literature great, Rosemary Sutcliff, Anne finds it “a pleasant surprise to see Rosemary Sutcliff’s novels recommended as cool teenage reads in the New York Public Library’s Stuff For the Teen Age blog”. (Thank you, Anne, for pointing to this at the You Write! tab and page). It starts:

Who says that all historical fiction is dull and boring? If done correctly, historical fiction is not dull at all. It’s time travel in a book. Who hasn’t imagined being transported back through time to experience what life was like during a different period in history? I particularly love reading stories that are completely out of my realm of knowledge and experience and have a sense of the romantic about it—novels about war, warriors and (ahem) gladiators tend to fit that bill.

One of the more well known authors of this type of historical fiction is Rosemary Sutcliff, a British author who primarily wrote stories set during Roman-occupied Britain circa 1st-5th centuries. Despite being set almost 2000 years ago, her books are still filled with ideas that we can all relate to today: belonging, honor, family, loyalty and pride. More interesting for us, her books are also filled with plenty of bloody battles, dirty fights, searing betrayal and love.

Source: Historical Fiction Part 1: Gladiators, Roman Soldiers and Slaves | The New York Public Library

The non-pareil of historical fiction is Rosemary Sutcliff

Anthony LawtonLeave a comment

Imogen Russell Williams wrote last year that “for me the nonpareil of children’s historical fiction remains Rosemary Sutcliff”:

Historical fiction for adults ranges in stature from the Booker-winning to the bodice-ripping – scholarly rambles or gleeful romps through a past animated, elucidated, or (at worst) knocked together into an unconvincing stage set by the writer’s imagination. The label carries its own baggage, however; like “crime”, or “fantasy”, sticking “historical” before “fiction” might, for some snobbish and deluded readers, require an “only” to complete the description.

It’s my feeling that historical fiction for children suffers less from the snootiness sometimes attracted by grown-up writing in the genre, perhaps because the educational cachet outweighs the sense that a “made-up” book is less worthwhile than a collection of primary sources. Certainly the best historical fiction of my childhood has remained with me, Read More »

Why Rosemary Sutcliff translates so well into German

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Anjy posted a fascinating comment at the You Write! page about how well Rosemary Sutcliff‘s style translates into German, and about her powers of description.

I have been addicted to Sutcliff’s book for about 40 years now. I have read everything by her in German and a lot in English and she is one of the very few authors I came across who benefits from translations. Mostly, when I read a book in German and then in the English original I prefer the original in comparison. Even if the translation is good (not every one is, Harry Potter is a linguistic catastrophe) normally the power and motion of the English is hardly transferred into German. Not so with Rosemary Sutcliff. Even by different translators her books are every bit enjoyable in German, sometimes even more.

Where the English language is strongly built upon verbs and verbal structures (the abundant “-ing-forms” are something every German pupils has to struggle to understand the concept of), German sets the focus much more on nouns and adjectives – and so does Rosemary Sutcliff. When she describes a scene – maybe due to being forced to just sit and watch for so many years of her early life – she concentrates on things that don’t move or change, on colours and textures. Like in later life as a miniature painter she draws her scenes in minute detail – much like a German sentence as Mark Twain depicted it .

I find this most unusual and remarkable and one the increasingly rare examples for an author whose style of writing (not so much the plots) is in direct correspondence with her very special biography.

I look forward to comments on the post….and if you have your own detailed reflections on Rosemary Sutcliff and her work, do please post them at the You Write! page .

Rosemary Sutcliff’s The Mark of the Horse Lord loved by Cornish writer Anna Maria Murphy

Anthony Lawton2 Comments

I discovered in 2010 that renowned Cornish writer Anna Maria Murphy was a great fan of  Rosemary Sutcliff, author of children’s books and historical fiction. Anna writes for  Theatre, as well as radio.

As a girl and a young woman, Rosemary Sutcliff was my absolute favourite writer and The Mark Of The Horse Lord one of my favourite books of all time. She was unlike any other writer for young people … ahead of her time by generations. She was one of the reasons I wanted to write as a young person … I always wanted to meet her … I wrote to her once, and she sent a lovely reply, but I lost the letter many years ago.

Anna began to write for theatre to avoid playing a dog! Her writing for Kneehigh has included ‘Don John’, ‘The Bacchae’, ‘The Red Shoes’, ‘Tristan & Yseult’, ‘Skulduggery’, ‘Doubtful Island’ ‘Ghost Nets’, ‘Women Who Threw the Day Away’, ‘Telling Tales’, ‘Wild Bride’ (The Shamans) and the film ‘Flight’. She has also written for Theatre Alibi, Platform 4, Brainstorm Films, The Eden Project, and several plays for Radio 4.

(Re-post from 2010, slightly updated)