Rosemary Sutcliff in List of Top Twenty Living British Authors | The Times newspaper November 12th 1981

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Forty-one years ago the Book Marketing Council published a list of who they judged to be the 20 greatest living British authors. None is still alive. The Times – then (and now?) a paper of record – covered the group, but sadly mis-spelled Rosemary Sutcliff as Sutcliffe (sic) with an E.

The full list was Beryl Bainbridge (21 Nov 1932 – 2 July 2010), John Betjeman (28 Aug 1906 – 19 May 1984), Malcolm Bradbury (7 Sept 1932 – 27 Nov 2000), Anthony Burgess (25 Feb 1917 – 22 Nov 1993), Margaret Drabble, Lawrence Durrell (27 Feb 1912 – 7 Nov 1990), John Fowles, Leon Garfield (14 Jul 1921 – 2 Jun 1996), William Golding (19 Sept 1911 – 19 Jun 1993), Graham Greene (2 Oct 1904 – 3 Apr 1991), Ted Hughes (17 Aug 1930 – 28 Oct 1998), John Le Carre, Laurie Lee, Rosamund Lehmann (3 Feb 1901 – 12 March 1990), Iris Murdoch (15 Jul 1919 – 8 Feb 1999) , V.S. Naipaul (17 Aug 1932 – 11 Aug 2018 ), V.S Pritchett (16 Dec 1900 – 20 Mar 1997. Rosemary Sutcliffe (sic), Laurens Van de Post (13 Dec 1906 – 16 Dec 1996), Rebecca West (21 Dec 1892 – 15 Mar 1983).

Article from The Times newspaper on top 20 20th century living authors at circa 1980

Treasure trove of Rosemary Sutcliff, British writer of historical fiction and children’s literature correspondence in decades long friendship with Canadian Christina Duff Stewart discovered at Toronto Public Library

Rather unsystematically gathering information about my relative, British writer of historical fiction and children’s literature, Rosemary Sutcliff, I have come across online mention of a carefully archived and indexed collection of 33 years correspondence with Rosemary Sutcliff donated to Toronto Public Library by her Canadian friend Christina Duff Stewart. There are 83 letters, 14 Christmas cards, and 7 ‘Round Robins’ of correspondence and also various books given to ‘Chris’ and ‘Christina’ by Rosemary. It’s a veritable treasure trove!

The contents are listed in a document which itself is intriguing. I was moved to learn, for example, that ‘Letter 82’ (of November 16th 1981) has a particular connection to my immediate family.

2-page letter with news of a minor car accident, work on the Bonnie Dundee book, and the birth of Rowan Rosemary Lawton, her godson Anthony’s (me) daughter.

Perhaps influenced by Sutcliff-Lawton genes (Rosemary Sutcliff was my first cousin-once-removed, my great aunt Nessie’s daughter) my daughter who is referred to now a literary agent!

The introduction to the detailed list of contents gives an idea of what is there. Unfortunately in my case to consult the collection in person,, and maybe to obtain copies or at least transcripts, Toronto is about 3,500 miles away from Leicestershire in England where I am writing this

Rosemary Sutcliff researched her books of historical fiction and children’s literature with “exquisite care” | Oxford Encyclopaedia of Children’s Literature


“Critics of Rosemary Sutcliff’s work sometimes comment on its difficulty both in terms of the language she employs and in terms of the historical depth her novels embrace.” But Romey (as I knew her, a close family member) welcomed as compliments these sorts of evaluations of her writing.

“She prided herself on never writing down to her readers, expecting them instead to be enticed into enjoying a compelling and demanding tale by the pageantry of history and the warm humanity of people in every era.”

“She carefully creates dialogue in her novels that recollects the speech of a bygone era without falling into what she termed ‘gadzookery.’ Sutcliff also researched her novels with exquisite care, and they reflect her vast knowledge of military tactics, religious practices, landscapes, and the material conditions and artifacts of everyday life whether in a Bronze Age village or in a Roman legion on the move.”

“Other commentators have noted the limited role that female characters play in her novels. Except for a few volumes that focus on a young woman, like Song for a Dark Queen (1978), which tells the tale of Boudicca, the queen of the Iceni who led a revolt against the Romans in a.d. 60, this is certainly true. Sutcliff often includes energetic and courageous women among her secondary characters, but providing insights into women’s roles in history is not among her greatest strengths.”

Extracts from Oxford Encyclopaedia of Children’s Literature on Rosemary Sutcliff.

On Rosemary Sutcliff’s Life — The Independent’s Obituary

ROSEMARY SUTCLIFF’s historical novels opened the eyes of a generation of children to the past. They also set a new standard for children’s historical fiction because of their insight, passion and commitment.

Sutcliff was a demanding writer who expected a lot from her readers which is why her books are also wholly satisfying for adults. She evokes time and place with an incredibly sure touch and – once she had found her true voice with The Eagle of the Ninth in 1954 – a sharp ear for the dialogue of the past, For child readers, the fact that Sutcliff wrote about ordinary people and not the rich and famous had a particular appeal. She also wrote largely about children, mostly boys, and often about children alone or outcast.

Perhaps because at the age of two she contracted Still’s disease, a form of juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, which left her paralysed and wheelchair-bound, she had a natural empathy with those with handicap or disability. Drem, the boy with the withered arm in Warrior Scarlet (1958), is one of the most sympathetic and most powerful of her heroes, while the unthinking prejudice that surrounds the cripple in The Witches’ Brat (1970) reflects a heartfelt understanding of the isolation experienced by those who are ‘different’.

In addition, Sutcliff had an integrity verging on ruthlessness, which meant that her stories rarely fell in to sentimentality. She pulled no punches, as in Warrior Scarlet when Drem fails the intitiation test of killing his wolf and thus must become a shepherd instead of a warrior as his forebears have been. As a reader one longs for him to succeed but Sutcliff’s own solution, that he kills a wolf in his job as a shepherd, is ultimately far more satisfying.

In Frontier Wolf (1980) the young centurion Alexios Aquila makes the wrong choice in battle. Faced with the same decision later on he must choose again. He makes the same choice but this time it is right. It is this commitment to reality rather than fictionalised optimism that gives Sutcliff’s stories their subtlety and plausibility.

Her vision of the past was similarly well-balanced and unsentimental. Her attention to the details of life built up pictures which were accurate, capturing discomfort and narrow- mindedness as well as the simplicity and clarity of life. Sutcliff combined a clear and profound historicism with a curiosity about the past. In none of her books is there a trace of the card index, so fatal for a reader. She used a variety of periods and places for her books but was always most absorbed by how the people of any period lived, worked and interacted with each other.

She knew and loved the Sussex Downs and had an astonishing feel for their past. She was fascinated by the continuity of history and how a place like the South Downs had been lived in since the Dark Ages.

In many of her books she touched on how tribes with old and new beliefs exist side by side until gradually one becomes dominant. The Little Dark People in Warrior Scarlet contrast with the Golden People who use copper goods and wear coloured cloth; the Britons invaded by the Romans and gradually learning their new-fangled ways provide the background to titles ranging from The Eagle of the Ninth to The Silver Branch (1957), The Lantern Bearers (1959) and, most recently, Frontier Wolf; the Saxons adapt the advanced ways of the Normans in Knight’s Fee (1960) and – slightly later, as the two sides move more closely together – in Dawn Wind (1961). But it is not only her domestic details that convince and absorb.

Sutcliff had an exceptional ability to describe the complexity of army strategies and the details of combat as well as to capture the emotions of fighting on any scale. Her war scenes are intense, convincing and apparently unrestrained, walking a delicate tightrope which prevents them from lapsing into the bloodthirsty. Sutcliff was never sadistic or cruel. She did not whitewash war or violence, but she did not relish it either. She recognised it as part and parcel of our past.

Sutcliff was born in 1920, the daughter of a naval officer, and much of her childhood was spent moving from one port to another. Because of her parents’ movements and her illness, she did not attend school on a regular basis, and was educated largely at home. At the age of 14 she was sent to Bideford School of Art where she proved herself a talented artist. She set out on a career as a miniature painter, and was a member of the Royal Society of Minature Painters.

From her training as a miniaturist came a detailed and fine way of looking which she used to set and define her writing. Her prose is always lucid and always vivid. The accuracy of her detail enabled her to create an enormously rich canvas with absolute conviction. She never wrote down to her child readers but had an instinctive way of speaking directly to them. She was one of a generation of children’s writers who understood the importance of writing for children as intelligent readers. She gave them a way of stepping into the past by offering characters with whom they could immediately identify. She loved the past and made it available and fresh without ever corrupting it with contemporary overtones.

Sutcliff was widely acknowledged as a writer of imagination and perception whose body of work – over 50 works spanning more than 40 years from 1950 – made an enormous impact on the way history was presented in fiction for children. She was awarded the Library Association Carnegie Medal in 1960 and the Children’s Rights Workshop Other Award in 1978: the first an establishment award which gave her the recognition she deserved for the majority of her books and the second, an equally well- deserved award, for her sympathetic – and decidedly ‘feminist’ – account of the life of Boudicca.

Rosemary Sutcliff’s works were translated into 15 languages. Although she had limited use of her hands, she wrote all her books in longhand, often in three complete drafts. She kept writing to the morning of the day she died and there are completed books in manuscript which have yet to be published

Writing for childen as simple as bringing them up!

Ursula Le Guin book cover(Adapted from first post: April 25, 2012)

On Twitter … Nick Cook quotes fantasy and science fiction author Ursula Le Guin on writing for children: “Sure, it’s simple, writing for kids. Just as simple as bringing them up!”  I was minded to find the context for the comment. It was was new to me, and Rosemary did not have children, just her appallingly untrained dogs, but I imagined she would have agreed.

Mind you, Rosemary Sutcliff did firmly resist using the word ‘kids’ for children; a kid, she used to say to me, is a young goat.

Anyway, the context is this: Le Guin wrote in an essay first published in 1979. Read More »