The The Oxford Encyclopedia of Children’s Literature from 2006 has a long entry on Rosemary Sutcliff. It suggests that The Mark of the Horse Lord (published in 1966) is her finest historical fiction in the eyes of many people.
Nominations for Carnegie Medal for Children’s Literature, and Kate Greenaway Medal for illustrated children’s book 2016 announced | Rosemary Sutcliff awarded Carnegie in 1959 for The Lantern Bearers
A loblolly man was a surgeon’s mate on navy ships | Loblolly was a thick porridge.
Reading Philp Larkin’s poem Toads, from 1955, I wondered at the term ‘loblolly men’ in one verse:
Lots of folk live on their wits: Lecturers, lispers, Losels, loblolly-men, louts- They don't end as paupers; Lots of folk live up lanes With fires in a bucket, Eat windfalls and tinned sardines- they seem to like it.
In the 18th century, crews of British Royal Navy ships usually included ‘loblolly men’—surgeon’s mates, young men who helped the surgeons by collecting amputated limbs, hauling the buckets of tar used to cauterise stumps, and spreading sand to soak up blood. They were also responsible for feeding sick and wounded sailors a thick meat and vegetable porridge known as ‘loblolly’— hence their name. All this Rosemary Sutcliff’s beloved father, a Commodore in the Royal Navy, could have told me, as she could have. Today, I just have Google for the picture and the Oxford English Dictionary (OED).
The OED defines ‘loblolly’ as
Thick gruel or spoon-meat, freq. referred to as a rustic or nautical dish or simple medicinal remedy … Hence, a ship-doctor’s medicines.
The OED notes a quotation: “It makes an excellent grewell, or lob-lolly which is very soueraigne at Sea” in 1620, in a book by one Gervase Markham, entitled Markhams farewell to husbandry: or, the enriching of all sorts of barren and steril grounds in our kingdome, to be as fruitfull ion all manner of graine, pulse, and grasse, as the best grounds… · They refer to a version printed for the “fourth time, revised, corrected, and amended, together with many new additions, and cheape experiments, 1638.” It was printed in London by Edvvard Griffin for John Harison, “at the signe of the golden Vnicorne in Pater-noster-row”.
Collecting maps from children’s books and historical fiction of Rosemary Sutcliff
I am embarking on a hunt got all the maps that appear in Rosemary Sutcliff books, of all types. I hope readers can help ….
‘Heather, Oak and Olive’ by Rosemary Sutcliff to be re-published in USA
Source: Paul Dry Books
ROSEMARY SUTCLIFF (1920-92) 