Rosemary Sutcliff author page

Rosemary Sutcliff biography

Rosemary Sutcliff was an English writer of children’s and young adult historical fiction, as well as retellings of myth and legend. Oxford University Press records that her first children’s book was published in 1950, and she went on to build a substantial body of historical writing for younger readers.

Her early books included The Chronicles of Robin Hood (1950), Simon (1953) and The Eagle of the Ninth (1954). The Eagle of the Ninth, set in Roman Britain, became her best-known novel and was followed by further linked historical novels including The Silver Branch and The Lantern Bearers.

Sutcliff also published retellings such as Black Ships Before Troy, The Wanderings of Odysseus, Tristan and Iseult and Beowulf: Dragonslayer, alongside her memoir Blue Remembered Hills.

Her work received major literary recognition. The Lantern Bearers won the Carnegie Medal in 1959. Tristan and Iseult won the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award in 1971. The Mark of the Horse Lord received the Phoenix Award in 1985, and The Shining Company received the same award in 2010.

She was appointed CBE in 1992.