Category: General

Trawling the internet, researching libraries and databases, and occasionally from material sent to me, I discover things I did not know much about, or indeed at all! There can be more than one Discovery of the Day.

The Books of Rosemary Sutcliff

Her Titles

A Rosemary Sutcliff  Bibliography

The widely read and acclaimed The Eagle of the Ninth, published in 1954, still in print, is just one of some sixty books by Rosemary Sutcliff. This post lists every book by Rosemary Sutcliff—author, historical novelist and children’s writer. For a short biography of Rosemary Sutcliff see Life tab.

Eagle of the Ninth and similar

The Eagle of the Ninth (1954) illustrated by C. Walter Hodges
The Silver Branch (1957) illustrated by Charles Keeping
The Lantern Bearers (1959) illustrated by Charles Keeping
The Capricorn Bracelet  (1973) illustrated by Charles Keeping
Three Legions (1980) is an omnibus edition containing the first three books
The Eagle of the Ninth Chronicles (2010) is an omnibus edition containing the first three books
The Eagle of the Ninth Collection Boxed Set (2012) is an omnibus edition containing the first three books

Camelot or King Arthur novels

Sword at Sunset (1963)
The Sword and the Circle (1979)
The Light Beyond the Forest (1979)
The Road to Camlann (1981)
The King Arthur Trilogy (1999), omnibus of The Sword and the Circle, The Light Beyond the Forest, The Road to Camlann

Other children’s and young adult novels

Chronicles of Robin Hood (1950)
The Queen Elizabeth Story (1950) illustrated by C. Walter Hodges
The Armourer’s House (1951)
Brother Dustyfeet (1952)
Simon (1953) illustrated by C. Walter Hodges
Outcast (1955) illustrated by Richard Kennedy
The Shield Ring (1956)
Warrior Scarlet (1957) illustrated by Charles Keeping
Lady in Waiting (1957)
Knight’s Fee (1960) illustrated by Charles Keeping
The Bridge Builders (1959)
Dawn Wind (1961) illustrated by Charles Keeping
Beowulf (1961) illustrated by Charles Keeping (also published as Dragon Slayer)
The Hound of Ulster (1963) illustrated by Victor Ambrus
The Mark of the Horse Lord (1965) illustrated by Charles Keeping
The Flowers of Adonis (1965)
A Saxon Settler (1965)
The Chief’s Daughter (1967)
The High Deeds of Finn Mac Cool (1967)
A Circlet of Oak Leaves (1968)
The Witch’s Brat (1970)
Tristan and Iseult (1971)
The Truce of the Games (1971)
Heather, Oak, and Olive  (1972), omnibus with three titles The Chief”s Daughter, A Circlet of Oak Leaves, and A Crown of Wild Olive (originally published as The Truce of the Games)
The Capricorn Bracelet (1973)
The Changeling (1974) illustrated by Victor Ambrus
We Lived in Drumfyvie (1975) with Margaret Lyford-Pike
Blood Feud (1976) illustrated by Charles Keeping
Sun Horse, Moon Horse (1977)
Shifting Sands (1977)
Song for a Dark Queen (1978)
Frontier Wolf (1980)
Eagle’s Egg (1981)
Bonnie Dundee (1983)
Flame-Coloured Taffeta (1986) illustrated by Rachel Birkett
The Roundabout Horse (1986)
A Little Dog Like You (1987) illustrated by Jane Johnson
The Best of Rosemary Sutcliff (1987) omnibus edition contains Warrior Scarlet, The Mark of the Horse Lord and Knight”s Fee
Little Hound Found (1989)
The Shining Company (1990)
The Minstrel and the Dragon Pup (1993) illustrated by Emma Chichester Clark. 
Black Ships Before Troy (1993) illustrated by Alan Lee 
Chess-dream in the Garden (1993) illustrated by Ralph Thompson
The Wanderings of Odysseus (1995) illustrated by Alan Lee 
Sword Song (1997)

Novels for adults

Lady in Waiting (1957)
The Rider of the White Horse (1959)
Sword at Sunset (1963)
The Flowers of Adonis (1969)
Blood and Sand (1987)

Non-fiction

Rudyard Kipling—A Monograph (1960)
Houses and History (1960)
Heroes and History (1965), illustrated by Charles Keeping
Arthur Ransome, Rudyard Kipling and Walter De La Mare (1968) (with Leonard Clark and Hugh Shelley) [reproduces the Rudyard Kipling mongraph—above]
Is Anyone There? (1978) (with Monica Dickens)
Blue Remembered Hills (1983) (Her autobiography, or ‘memoir’ as she called it)

Rosemary Sutcliff | Storyteller | Writer of historical fiction and children’s literature | #ReadingRosemarySutcliff

Kurt Vonnegut’s Eight Tips for Writing Short Stories

Kurt Vonnegut’s Eight Tips for Short Stories

Photo of author Kurt Vonnegut

  1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
  2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
  3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
  4. Every sentence must do one of two things–reveal character or advance the action.
  5. Start as close to the end as possible.
  6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them–in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
  7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
  8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

Source: Medium

The Dolphin Ring appears in eight award-winning books by Rosemary Sutcliff, world-renowned writer of historical fiction for children and adults

Careful reading of the historical fiction for adults and children of Rosemary Sutcliff (1920-92) reveals that the same Dolphin Ring with a dolphin design on a flawed emerald was the Flavius family signet ring which threads through eight of her novels: The Eagle of the Ninth, The Silver Branch, Frontier Wolf, The Lantern Bearers, Sword at Sunset, Dawn Wind, Sword Song, & The Shield Ring.

Writer of historical fiction Rosemary Sutcliff had a “mystical communion with the past” and an “uncanny sense of place”

Rosemary Sutcliff (1920-1992) had several editors during her long writing career which produced over 60 books. One editor wrote (in a website post that I can no longer trace):

(Rosemary Sutcliff) had, as did Henry Treece, a mystical communion with the past, which enabled her both to recreate tiny details, and to confound military historians with her understanding of the art of battle in any situation she cared to devise. Her sense of place was uncanny, in that she could get no nearer to a site than the seat of a car on an adjacent road. Friends often served as her eyes, and also as her researchers, but it was the conclusions she drew from the evidence, and her re-creations of them, that made her contribution to the literature about the ancient world so distinctive. Where she was simply embellishing recorded history, she was no better than anyone else. She also had one of the rudest senses of humour in anyone I have met.”

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