Rosemary Sutcliff (1920 – 1992) | “Historical writer of genius ” | Born today December 14th
Tag: historical fiction
Rosemary Sutcliff’s Knight’s Fee always made Mel Saxby cry!
Ah the joys of Google and Amazon, and random discoveries of past writings! In 2000 one Mel Saxby reviewed Rosemary Sutcliff’s Knight’s Fee, urging people to read an “underrated” novel:
Knight’s Fee is one of the four or five books I’ve read in my life which alway make me cry. Though written for children, it’s completely unpatronising, always crediting the reader with intelligence and imagination, and is beautifully written. It tells the story of Randal, a half-Saxon half-Breton lad in Norman England, an orphan left to fend for himself as a dog-boy in Arundel castle, and details his gradual rise to knighthood and freedom, at a terrible price. I have only ever seen this book in hardback, in an Oxford Childrens Library edition, never in paperback, which is a great pity, as it is a vastly underrated book by this author, far better I think than her more well-known stories of Roman Britain, and deserves to be much more widely read.
Rosemary Sutcliff’s novel Rider of the White Horse loved by Australian writer Alison Stuart
Alison Stuart describes herself as a ‘writer, lawyer, traveller, mother, wife and cat person!’ She lives in Melbourne, Australia. Her ‘passion is for the period of the English Civil War’ and she has two published novels set in that era. She has written :
‘Rosemary Sutcliff was probably my biggest influence growing up with her Rider of the White Horse, sending me on a quest to learn all I could about Sir Thomas Fairfax’.
Sources: her website, blog and historical fiction books
Rosemary Sutcliff on writing historical fiction for adults and children | Sutcliff Discovery of the Day
Rosemary Sutcliff once said of her writing:
“The themes of my children’s books are mostly quite adult, and in fact the difference between writing for children and for adults is, to me at any rate, only a quite small gear change.”
Source: Townsend, John Rowe. 1971. A Sense of Story. London: Longman p. 201
Charlotte loves Rosemary Sutcliff’s The Queen Elizabeth Story | Sutcliff Review of the Week
Charlotte thinks that Rosemary Sutcliff’s children’s historical novel The Queen Elizabeth Story is “a lovely book, full of thick description and vivid character and history made real. And its magic is aided and abetted by the wonderful drawings of C. Walter Hodges“, her “favourite children’s book illustrator.” Charlotte was writing a review on the Charlotte’s Library blog.
What really made this book for me, when I was young, was Adam. He was my first book love ( I was nine), and I am awfully fond of him still. He is lame, but so gallant and kind that Perdita doesn’t notice it…and in a scene I especially love, he invites a sad and lonely Perdita to a private banquet at the manor, where he makes the lords and ladies of a tapestry come alive for her in a glorious magical wonderful-ness.
ROSEMARY SUTCLIFF (1920-92) 