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.
Category: Novels, Stories & Books
Rosemary Sutcliff was an internationally renowned writer of historical novels, for children, young adults and adults. She also wrote stories for children. This category compiles the posts on this blog by title.
I think I now have correct the list correct of books by Rosemary Sutcliff that feature the signet ring with a dolphin design. Her signature also featured a dolphin. In chronological order the books are (click on the titles to find posts on this blog about each book; click here to find summaries of each one):
David Urbach has pointed me to a blogger’s 10/10 review of Rosemary Sutcliff’sThe Eagle of the Ninth.
Rosemary Sutcliff’s most famous book ought to be looked at in two different ways, and judged on two levels. Firstly, any reader venturing into historical fiction will be instantly drawn to it as a deserving classic. Every word of praise afforded The Eagle of the Ninth is surely deserved, and every criticism should be scrutinised heavily. This book is not only a simple story; it is a revelation. It is a sudden meeting between the children’s and young adults’ fiction of the ’80s and ’90s, when children’s literature began to be taken seriously; and literature from the early twentieth century and the nineteenth century, when writers felt able to wax philosophic and lyrical, and were not so concerned with spending a hundred pages on diligently establishing a scene and building meticulously to a grand climax or a cheap twist. Source: The Eagle of the Ninth, by Rosemary Sutcliff | Library of Libation
I recall Rosemary, perched at her usual desk, reading out loud to my enraptured young son drafts of The Minstrel and the Dragon Pup, which was her first picture book. It was illustrated by Emma Chichester-Clark. In the UK , the eminent critic Naomi Lewis often reviewed Rosemary Sutcliff’s books. She praised The Minstrel and the Dragon Pup as ‘inspired’ and ‘distinguished’. An American critic thought it a ‘fast-paced fairy tale of loss and joyful reunion’ which was ‘beautifully illustrated’. Read More »
When I started writing Sword at Sunset I made at least three false starts, but I couldn’t think what was the matter. I knew exactly what the story was that I wanted to tell, but it wouldn’t come. Then suddenly the penny dropped: it had to be first-person singular. I had never done first-person singular before, but the moment I started doing it that way it came, like a bird. But I had problems with it: first-person singular is very different from third-person writing, and I had no experience of it at all. But it was the only way it could be written.
All of which set me thinking about poems and songs in Rosemary Sutcliff’s novels. Such as the snatches of a legionnaires’ song in The Eagle of the Ninth.
Oh when I joined the Eagles
(As it might be yesterday)
I kissed a girl at Clusium
Before I marched away
A long march, a long march
And twenty years in store
When I left my girl at Clusium
Beside the threshing-floor
…
The girls of Spain were honey-sweet,
And the golden girls of Gaul:
And the Thracian maids were soft as birds
To hold the heart in thrall.
But the girl I kissed at Clusium
Kissed and left at Clusium,
The girl I kissed at Clusium
I remember best of all
ROSEMARY SUTCLIFF (1920-92) 