Rosemary Sutcliff - Life

Life

Born 14 December 1920 to George Ernest Sutcliff and his wife Elizabeth ("Nessie", née Lawton) in East Clandon, Surrey, Sutcliff spent her childhood in Malta and various naval bases where her father, a Royal Navy officer, was stationed. She was stricken with Still's Disease when she was very young, and thus used a wheelchair most of her life. Due to her chronic illness, Sutcliff spent most of her time with her mother—a tireless storyteller—from whom she learned many of the Celtic and Saxon legends that she would later expand into works of historical fiction. Sutcliff's early schooling was constantly interrupted by moving house and her disabling condition. She did not learn to read until she was nine years of age, and left school at fourteen years to enter the Bideford Art School, which she attended for three years, graduating from the General Art Course. Sutcliff then worked as a painter of miniatures.

Sutcliff's first published book was The Chronicles of Robin Hood (1950). Her best-known book may be Eagle of the Ninth (Oxford, 1954), which inaugurated a series sometimes called Marcus or simply The Eagle of the Ninth. For that first book and for its sequel The Silver Branch (1957), she was a commended runner up for the annual Carnegie Medal in Literature from the Library Association, recognising the year's best children's book by a British subject. She was also both a 1956 and a 1958 runner up (thus four times in five years) before winning the Medal for the third Marcus book, The Lantern Bearers (1959). Where the first two books and one later one were set in Roman Britain, The Lantern Bearers immediately follows the withdrawal of the Roman Empire, when the British people are threatened by remaining Germanic troops and by invaders.

Sutcliff was Carnegie runner up again for Tristan and Iseult (1971), retelling the Arthurian story of the same name; for that work she won the annual Horn Book Award in the United States. In 1974, she was highly commended for the Hans Christian Andersen Award. The Mark of the Horse Lord won the inaugural Phoenix Award in 1985, named by the U.S.-based Children's Literature Association the best children's book published twenty years earlier that did not win a major award. The Shining Company won the same award in 2010.

Sutcliff lived for many years in Walberton near Arundel, Sussex. In 1975, she was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for services to children's literature, and was promoted to be a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1992. She wrote incessantly throughout her life and was still writing on the morning of her death in 1992. Sutcliff never married and had no children.