Category: The Eagle of the Ninth Book

Rosemary Sutcliff’s The Eagle of The Ninth is an inspiration!

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Rosemary Sutcliff fan Robert Vermaat wrote this great comment in response to the Dutch version of The Eagle of the Ninth book cover I posted yesterday.

Well, that’s THE BOOK. The book that got me hooked on Rosemary Sutcliff, but also the book that got me hooked on Roman history. I must have been about 9 years old or something, but it shaped my life. I’m not kidding! How could a mere novel do that? Well, my fascination with the Roman world was fed by a holiday in Germany right along the Roman Limes and its reconstructed wooden watchtowers. The die was cast. I began reading more books by Rosemary Sutcliff, and after school I studied history, where I met my current wife. Sutcliff’s Arthurian novels had by then set me in the direction of the post-Roman period, which brought me to research Vortigern and, later, the Later Roman Army. Need I say more?

A detail: I later managed to buy the very book that began all this when the library cast it aside.

Animal furs for freezing weather | Rosemary Sutcliff Discovery of the Day

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Here is another cover of Rosemary Sutcliff’s classic children’s novel, The Eagle of the Ninth.

It’s the 1986 English edition. The cover shows the ninth legion marching with animal furs to keep them warm in the freezing British weather. I could do with one of those now! Some things haven’t changed in 2,000 years.

The Eagle of the Ninth in Swedish | Rosemary Sutcliff Discovery of the Day

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Here is another of cover of Rosemary Sutcliff’s The Eagle of the Ninth. It is the Swedish version from 1993.

Inside, there is a map of Britain, showing the Latin names of the largest settlements of Roman Britain. This is slightly different to the map shown in English versions of the book. One thing I find intriguing is the Latin name for Scotland. In the English version, it is written as Caledonia. However, in the Swedish version it is written as Caledonien. I wonder why? If Caledonia is from the Latin language, is Caledonien Swedish/Latin? The word Britannia also differs here. It is written as Britannien. However, other names of settlements remain in conventional Latin.
I wonder why the translations differ. Any ideas?

Eagle book sleeves | Rosemary Sutcliff’s The Eagle of the Ninth

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Rosemary Sutcliff was my dad’s Godmother. In my family home in Leicester, many of Rosemary’s books line the shelves. They are printed in dozens of different languages, from first editions to last.

Rosemary’s most celebrated book is The Eagle of the Ninth. It is now in it’s fiftieth edition. I asked my wife to take some photographs of all the different covers of the book we could find with her new camera. I will be posting these photographs over the next few weeks, in a completely random order.

The first post is the 1959 Canadian edition, printed by The T. H. Best Printing Company Limited. The back drop to the book is our garden, covered in snow. It’s freezing here!

First Edition | Rosemary Sutcliff’s The Eagle of the Ninth

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Well, they don’t make’em like they used to. I love the smell of old books and the way the pages feel. This edition is especially interesting due to the striking illustration by C. Walter Hodges.

1st edition of The Eagle of the Ninth