Rosemary Sutcliff’s first book Wild Sunrise went unpublished

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Rosemary Sutcliff’s first book, the unpublished Wild Sunrise, was about the Roman invasion of Britain told from the British viewpoint. The hero was Cradoc, a name Rosemary Sutcliff used later  in The Eagle of the Ninth and in Sun Horse, Moon Horse.

Her father (George Ernest Sutcliff, who I knew as Uncle George) had a naval hero called Admiral Sir Christopher Cradock, who went down with his flagship at the battle of Coronel in 1914.

Wild Sunrise disappeared, which “was as well”, Rosemary said in her memoir Blue Remembered Hills (1983), ‘because so much of me was in it, naked and defenceless’

  • Source: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Article on Rosemary Sutcliff by Gilian Avery

A mystical communion with the past … and one of the rudest senses of humour in anyone I have met! |An editor on Rosemary Sutcliff

Anthony Lawton3 Comments

I once found that an editor of Rosemary Sutcliff once wrote (I could not for a long time locate the source, a website on ancient history, but see Anne’s comment below):

 I knew Rosemary as a friend and, briefly, as her editor…most of her best writing was done in the 50s and 60s, beginning with The Eagle of the Ninth and ending with The Mark of the Horse Lord, which is my own favourite. What she really wanted to do, however, was to write romantic novels full of sex, but here her experience, and imagination, let her down. She was crippled by Still’s disease, contracted as a child – many of her protagonists have physical disabilities of one kind or another. She had no movement in her legs, and hands whose work (including writing and miniature painting) was done with just a forefinger and a tiny, rudimentary thumb.

She 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.”

Carnegie Medal 2014 shortlist announced | Rosemary Sutcliff won in 1959 with The Lantern Bearers and runner-up for Tristan and Iseult

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The Carnegie Medal—judged by librarians in the United Kingdom is 77 years-old, this year! Past winners have included Rosemary Sutcliff as well such classic authors of children’s literature as Arthur Ransome and  C.S. Lewis. The shortlist of eight books for 2014 has just been announced:

  1. All the Truth That’s in Me by Julie Berry (Published by Templar)
  2. The Bunker Diary by Kevin Brooks (Puffin)
  3. The Child’s Elephant by Rachel Campbell-Johnston (David Fickling Books)
  4. Ghost Hawk by Susan Cooper (Bodley Head)
  5. Blood Family by Anne Fine (Doubleday)
  6. Rooftoppers by Katherine Rundell (Faber & Faber)
  7. Liar & Spy by Rebecca Stead (Andersen Press)
  8. The Wall by William Sutcliffe (sic) (Bloomsbury)

Rosemary Sutcliff  (1920-92) won the Library Association Carnegie Medal in 1959 for her historical novel for children The Lantern Bearers (she wrote for children ‘aged 8 to 88’, she said).  She was runner-up with Tristan and Iseult in 1972.

First awarded to Arthur Ransome for Pigeon Post, the medal is now awarded by The Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals. The winner  receives a golden medal and  £500 worth of books to donate to a library. Both the Carnegie Medal and its sister award, the Kate Greenaway Medal for illustrated books, are awarded every year.

Originally the Library Association started the prize in 1936 in memory of the Scottish-born philanthropist Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919). He was a self-made industrialist who made his fortune in the steel industry in the USA and who was a great supporter of libraries. He once said ”if ever wealth came to me that it should be used to establish free libraries”.

Rosemary Sutcliff also won or was nominated for many other awards in the UK and USA. (She won other awards in translation).

62 main characters in Rosemary Sutcliff’s historical novels, retellings of legend, and children’s books

Anthony Lawton1 Comment
  1. Adam is Perdita’s friend in The Queen Elizabeth Story (1950).
  2. Alcibiades, is a warrior in the Peloponnesian War, including in the dreadful battle of Syracuse, who has a complicated relationship with Athens  in The Flowers of Adonis (1969).
  3. Alexios is a Roman army officer who becomes commander of the motley, savage group known as the Frontier Wolves in Frontier Wolf (1980).
  4. Amias Hannaford is the boyhood friend of Simon who fights for the Royalists (the Cavaliers) in Simon (1953).
  5. Anne is the wife of Sir Thomas Fairfax and  mother of Moll who has to trail her husband as he leads his army around the country in The Rider of the White Horse (1959)
  6. Aquila is the young commander of a troop of cavalry who realises that his strongest loyalty is to his native Britain rather than to the legions and a distant empire he has never seen, in The Eagle of the Ninth (1954).
  7. Aracos is a horse-breeder in A Circlet of Oak Leaves (1968).
  8. Artos is the bastard son of Uther, who is raised by his uncle as a cavalryman to lead the Roman-British fight against the invading Saxons, in Sword at Sunset (1963).
  9. Beowulf is the eponymous hero of Beowulf (1961).
  10. Beric is the infant son of a Roman soldier  is shipwrecked; then grows up with a Briton tribe, but is rejected both by them and Rome in Outcast (1955)
  11. Bess Throckmorton is the lady waiting’—Sir Walter Raleigh’s wife— who had to stay home as he travelled the world’s oceans, in Lady in Waiting (1957).
  12. Bevis is the young boy who becomes the knight in Knight’s Fee (1960).
  13. Bjarni Sigurdson is a young sixteen year-old Viking swordsman who is banished from the settlement for five years and  becomes a successful mercenary in Sword Song (1997).
  14. Bjorn, the Bear-Cub, is the foster-son of the old harper, and becomes a harper himself in The Shield Ring (1956).
  15. Blue Feather is a twelve year old girl who is promised to the cruel chief of her people, Long Axe, in Shifting Sands (1977).
  16. Boudicca is the defiant queen of the Iceni who leads her small British tribe in rebellion against the Roman invaders in Song for a Dark Queen (1978).
  17. Carausius is the Emperor served by Justin and Flavius in The Silver Branch (1957).
  18. Cordella is the girl Quintus wishes to marry in Eagle’s Egg (1981) .
  19. Cuchulain is the boy in Ireland who claims the weapons of his manhood and becomes the great warrior and hero, The Hound of Ulster (1963).
  20. Damaris Crocker is  a twelve-year-old girl involved with smugglers in Flame-Coloured Taffeta (1986).
  21. Drem is a boy born with a withered right arm who grows up in a bronze-age settlement on the South Downs in Britain, eventually to become one of the hunters of his tribe, in Warrior Scarlet (1957).
  22. Felix is a legionary in A Circlet of Oak Leaves (1968).
  23. Finn is the hero of The High Deeds of Finn MacCool (1967).
  24. Flavia is Aquila’s sister, kidnapped by Saxon raiders, who marries a Saxon and has a Saxon-child  in The Lantern Bearers (1959).
  25. Flavius is a centurion, friend and colleague of Justin in The Silver Branch (1957).
  26. Frytha is a young orphaned Saxon girl who seeks refuge in the Secret Valley in the Lake District after her home is burnt by the Normans, and joins Jarl Buthar’s Viking band in The Shield Ring (1956).
  27. Godmund is the White King in Chess Dream in a Garden (1993).
  28. Guenhemara is the woman Artos loves in Sword at Sunset (1963).
  29. Hrosmunda is the White Queen in Chess Dream in a Garden (1993).
  30. Hugh Copplestone joins a group of strolling players before going on to university, in Brother Dusty-Feet (1952).
  31. Hugh Herriot is stable-lad then galloper to Claverhouse in 17th Century Scotland, in Bonnie Dundee (1983).
  32. Iseult is the wife of King Marc of Cornwall in Tristan and Iseult (1971).
  33. Jestyn is a young 10th-century English man who is sold into slavery to the Northmen in Blood Feud (1976).
  34. Justin is a young army surgeon who is loyal to the Emperor Carausius in The Silver Branch (1957).
  35. King Odysseus of Ithaca is a traveller who visits the Cyclops, the Island of the Dead and Circe in The Wanderings of Odysseus (1995).
  36. Liadhan is the half-sister of Levin who uses Red Phaedrus to bring back goddess-worship and set herself on the throne in The Mark of the Horse Lord (1965).
  37. Lovel is a boy with physical disabilities, but a deep knowledge of herbs and also a gift for healing, who eventually helps build St Bartholomew’s hospital and priory in The Witch’s Brat (1970).
  38. Lubrhin Dhu is the young man with an unusual talent for drawing in Sun Horse, Moon Horse (1977).
  39. Lucky is the dragon-pup in The Minstrel and the Dragon Pup (1993).
  40. Marcus Flavius Aquila follows in the steps of his disgraced father to join the Roman army, but in his first battle in England he is seriously injured and forced to leave—he sets out to the North to recover the lost Eagle of the Ninth legion (his father’s legion) in The Eagle of the Ninth (1954).
  41. Mordred is a knight who plots against his father, King Arthur, to bring down Arthur’s court and The Round Table in The Road to Camlann (1981).
  42. Nessan is the daughter of a clan chief, who has to deal with her fear of being offered as a sacrifice to the Black Mother in The Chief’s Daughter (1967)
  43. Oisin is Finn’s son in The High Deeds of Finn MacCool (1967).
  44. Owain, the last Roman-British wearer of the dolphin ring, is the only survivor of a Viking raid and the great battle of Aquae Sulis in Dawn Wind.(1961).
  45. Paris in Black Ships Before Troy: The Story of the Iliad (1993).
  46. Perdita from the English county of Devonshire, lives with her  her father the rector in the quiet Broomhill village where she nearly always finds fairies or Pharisees and sees Queen Elizabeth, in The Queen Elizabeth Story (1950).
  47. Piers is a cousin of Tamsyn who shares her feeling for the sea and becomes a close friend in The Armourer’s House (1951).
  48. Prosper becomes second shield-bearer to Prince Gorthyn in the Companions, a 300 strong anti-Saxon-invasion fighting 7th Century brotherhood in The Shining Company (1990).
  49. Randall is a young, ill-treated dog-boy who is wagered and won in a game of chess between a lord and a minstrel in Knight’s Fee (1960).
  50. Red Phaedrus is an enslaved gladiator in northern Britain in the first century; he earns his freedom, and accepts an offer to impersonate the missing Midir, son of a king of a Gaelic Kingdom, which gets him more than he bargained for in The Mark of the Horse Lord (1965).
  51. Robin Hood is the legendary outlaw in Sherwood Forest, fighting tyranny with a small band of followers, in The Chronicles of Robin Hood (1950).
  52. Simon Carey is a farmer’s son who enlists with the Parliamentary forces (the Roundheads) in Simon (1953).
  53. Sir Bors, Sir Galahad, Sir Lancelot, and Sir Percival are four knights who search for the Holy Grail in The Light Beyond the Forest (1979).
  54. Sir Thomas Fairfax is husband of Anne and father of Moll, the impressive soldier in the English Civil War novel, The Rider of the White Horse (1959).
  55. Tamsyn is a girl from Devon who has to grow up with her uncle—a famous armourer—and his family in London, dashing her hopes of setting sail with her seafaring uncle, in The Armourer’s House (1951).
  56. Tethra is the seventh-born child of the Chieftain of the Epidii in The Changeling (1974).
  57. The Minstrel is a down-at-heel minstrel who finds a beautiful egg on the seashore, uses his harp-music to help the dragon-pup hatch—a pup which he then loses to a thief but retrieves, and together they cure the king’s son, in The Minstrel and the Dragon Pup (1993).
  58. Thomas Keith is an apprentice gunsmith from Edinburgh who becomes a young soldier in the Napoleonic wars in Blood and Sand (1987).
  59. Tristan is the warrior lover of Iseult in Tristan and Iseult (1971).

“I, too, was Oxford” | “I, too, was Able” | “I could Walk” | “I did take sugar”

Link Anthony Lawton1 Comment

Ave! The Oxford University “I, too, am Oxford”  initiative Oxford University (Press) published, St Johns College visiting author Rosemary Sutcliff was left with significant physical disabilities from childhood Still’s disease. She surely would have been very supportive of the “I, too, am Oxford” initiative. Our project was inspired by the recent ‘I, too, am Harvard’ initiative. The Harvard project […]