Rosemary Sutcliff (1920-1992) is considered one of the finest writers of novels for children, young adults, and – as she put it – all children aged 8 to 88. The author of over 50 books, her works have been translated into over 20 languages. In addition to historical fiction and fantasy tales, she also wrote radio and television scripts.
Ms. Sutcliff's books include The Lantern Bearers; Sword at Sunset; The Mark of the Horse Lord; Song for a Dark Queen; Black Ships Before Troy; The Hound of Ulster; Beowulf; retellings of Irish legends; The Roundabout Horse; The Minstrel and the Dragon Pup; and her autobiography Blue Remembered Hills, about her own childhood and young adulthood. She took readers to – among other places and times – ancient Greece, Arthurian England, the Dark and Middle Ages, the Elizabethan and Tudor eras, the English Civil War, and the early 1800s in Medina. The first story she recalls writing was Wild Sunrise, about a British chieftain faced with the invasion of the Romans. She would later explore Britain under Rome rule in her 1954 novel The Eagle of the Ninth, from which The Eagle is adapted and of which over one million copies have been sold.
She was born in East Clandon, Surrey, in the U.K. When she was very young, her father, an officer in the Royal Navy, was transferred to Malta. The family moved frequently. Severely disabled by Stills disease – a form of juvenile arthritis, which led to many stays in hospital for painful remedial operations – Ms. Sutcliff was educated at home by her mother, who introduced her to legends, sagas, fairy tales, and the works of Rudyard Kipling. Despite her disability, she traveled abroad throughout her life; Greece was a particularly beloved destination.
She only learned to read at age 9, when she and her mother returned to England. In 1934, she enrolled at Bideford Art School in Devon. She was there for 3 years, passing the "City and Guilds" General Art Course. She was at first a painter of miniatures, but in 1946 she began to write, retelling the legends that her mother had told her as a young child. She wrote a retelling of Celtic and Saxon legends and showed them to a friend. He sent them to Oxford University Press (OUP). Although OUP rejected the manuscript, in 1950 they gave Ms. Sutcliff her first commission, for a children's version of the Robin Hood legends. She also wrote The Queen Elizabeth Story and sent that on to OUP as well. It was accepted; the two books were published within a few months of each other.
In 1959, she won the Carnegie Medal for The Lantern Bearers; she was a runner-up for it in 1972, for Tristan and Iseult. Her version of the story of King Arthur, Sword at Sunset, which was written for adults, topped the U.K. bestseller lists in 1963. In 1978, Song for a Dark Queen won the Other Award for non-sexist women's fiction. Most recently, in 2010, she was awarded the Phoenix Award in the U.S.A. for The Shining Company, having won it previously for The Mark of the Horse Lord.
In 1975, the Queen appointed Ms. Sutcliff an O.B.E. (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) for services to children's literature. In 1992, she was named a C.B.E. (Commander of the Order of the British Empire). She was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (FRSL) in 1982, and was for a time a member of the Royal Society of Miniature Painters.
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