Phoenix Award address (1985)
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sutcliff_spaceThis is Sutcliff's short acceptance 'speech' for the inaugural 1985 Phoenix Award won by The Mark of the Horse Lord, in which she discusses her feelings about the novel on its twentieth anniversary. It was published as “Rosemary Sutcliff’s thank-you address to the Children’s Literature Association in Arbor, Michigan, 19th May 1985 upon receipt of the Phoenix Award” in Children’s Literature Association Quarterly (Winter 1986), as you can see here. It's also found, along with papers on Sutcliff's work presumably presented at the same time, in The Phoenix Award of the Children's Literature Association, 1985-1989 (1993), edited by Alethea Helbig and Agnes Perkins.
The Phoenix Award is given to a twenty-year-old children's book that did not win any major awards when first published, chosen by the Children's Literature Association, a US group. Sutcliff won it again, posthumously, for The Shining Company in 2010. You can read the accompanying papers discussing The Shining Company, Blood Feud, and Sword Song here on the ChLA site.
Spoilers: Vague but major for the end of The Mark of the Horse Lord.
PHOENIX AWARD ADDRESS
Ladies and Gentlemen. I wish so much that I could be with you in person today, to thank the Phoenix Award Committee and to tell all of you how grateful and how deeply honoured I feel that The Mark of the Horse-Lord should have been chosen as the first book to receive this wonderful new award.
Horse-Lord is one of my best-beloved books, amongst my own, and has remained so warmly living in my mind, though I have never re-read it, that when I heard that it had won an award for a book published twenty years ago, my first thought was “How lovely!!” But my second was, “But it can’t be anywhere near twenty years old; it’s one of my quite recent books; there must be some mistake!” And I made all speed to get it out of the bookcase and look at the publication date, to make sure. And having got it out, of course I started reading it again.
Re-reading a book of my own is for me (and I imagine for most authors) a faintly nerve-wracking process, with all the fascination, but all the danger too, of returning to a place that one was happy in, a long time ago. There are the passages that make one think, “This is bad! This is overwritten. This is PURPLE! How did it ever get published?” Which is depressing to say the least of it. And there are the passages which make one think, “This is good! This is vivid and sensitive; I am sure I can’t write like that now.” Which is even more depressing. There are passages of both kinds in Horse-Lord but I do think, coming to it again after so many years, that it has stood the test of time, and I enjoyed reading it—except for the end, which tore my heart out just as it did when I wrote it.
I seem to have a tendency to sad or only half-happy endings, but none of the others are as starkly tragic as the end of Horse-Lord. I didn’t want it to be like that. When I started, I was not really sure that it was going to be, and hoped for the best. But as the book went on, its last page became more and more inevitable. I twisted and turned and tried all ways I could think of to find another way out; one that would save Red Phaedrus. But none of the endings I thought up rang true. They were all just manufactured happy endings that had really nothing to do with the story; and the tragic one, coming of its own accord, was the only one which belonged, which was organic to the story, completing the pattern which I had begun on the first page.
Quite a lot of friends and wellwishers told me, “You simply can’t do that! Not in a children’s book.” But I don’t believe that one should make allowances for young readers, feed them on pap. And children themselves show how little they need any punches pulled for them, by their fondness for both horror comics and the like, and for the ancient hero myths and legends which were certainly not meant for them in the first place, but of which they have taken possession. Stories dealing with the big basic values (as, incidentally, the early Westerns did), love and hate, cowardice and courage, loyalty and divided loyalty, the quest for honour, above all, the unending struggle between Good and Evil, which almost always end tragically in the death of the hero, generally in his hour of victory. Children should be allowed the great themes, which are also often tragic themes, which they can receive and make use of better than most adults can.
Standing aside, myself, and speaking not as the author but simply as a looker on, I am so glad, too, that the first winner of the Phoenix Award should be a historical novel. There seems to be a feeling against the genre nowadays; an idea that historical stories are simply escapist, and that because they are sited in the past, they have no relevance to the present day. In fact, of course, history and anything that helps to flesh out the bones of history and bring the past to life, has enormous relevance to the present day. To know where we started from and by what road we came to be where we are now – and to know this not only in an academic way but also with our emotions, not only with our heads but with our hearts, must surely be helping us in coping with the world in which we are today. And since history is a living and continuous process, must help us in our going forward into the part of history which is still in the future.
Once again, I give you my deepest thanks. I shall treasure my own particular phoenix, the first of its kind, as it deserves.
Rosemary Sutcliff, May 1985
The Phoenix Award is given to a twenty-year-old children's book that did not win any major awards when first published, chosen by the Children's Literature Association, a US group. Sutcliff won it again, posthumously, for The Shining Company in 2010. You can read the accompanying papers discussing The Shining Company, Blood Feud, and Sword Song here on the ChLA site.
Spoilers: Vague but major for the end of The Mark of the Horse Lord.
PHOENIX AWARD ADDRESS
Ladies and Gentlemen. I wish so much that I could be with you in person today, to thank the Phoenix Award Committee and to tell all of you how grateful and how deeply honoured I feel that The Mark of the Horse-Lord should have been chosen as the first book to receive this wonderful new award.
Horse-Lord is one of my best-beloved books, amongst my own, and has remained so warmly living in my mind, though I have never re-read it, that when I heard that it had won an award for a book published twenty years ago, my first thought was “How lovely!!” But my second was, “But it can’t be anywhere near twenty years old; it’s one of my quite recent books; there must be some mistake!” And I made all speed to get it out of the bookcase and look at the publication date, to make sure. And having got it out, of course I started reading it again.
Re-reading a book of my own is for me (and I imagine for most authors) a faintly nerve-wracking process, with all the fascination, but all the danger too, of returning to a place that one was happy in, a long time ago. There are the passages that make one think, “This is bad! This is overwritten. This is PURPLE! How did it ever get published?” Which is depressing to say the least of it. And there are the passages which make one think, “This is good! This is vivid and sensitive; I am sure I can’t write like that now.” Which is even more depressing. There are passages of both kinds in Horse-Lord but I do think, coming to it again after so many years, that it has stood the test of time, and I enjoyed reading it—except for the end, which tore my heart out just as it did when I wrote it.
I seem to have a tendency to sad or only half-happy endings, but none of the others are as starkly tragic as the end of Horse-Lord. I didn’t want it to be like that. When I started, I was not really sure that it was going to be, and hoped for the best. But as the book went on, its last page became more and more inevitable. I twisted and turned and tried all ways I could think of to find another way out; one that would save Red Phaedrus. But none of the endings I thought up rang true. They were all just manufactured happy endings that had really nothing to do with the story; and the tragic one, coming of its own accord, was the only one which belonged, which was organic to the story, completing the pattern which I had begun on the first page.
Quite a lot of friends and wellwishers told me, “You simply can’t do that! Not in a children’s book.” But I don’t believe that one should make allowances for young readers, feed them on pap. And children themselves show how little they need any punches pulled for them, by their fondness for both horror comics and the like, and for the ancient hero myths and legends which were certainly not meant for them in the first place, but of which they have taken possession. Stories dealing with the big basic values (as, incidentally, the early Westerns did), love and hate, cowardice and courage, loyalty and divided loyalty, the quest for honour, above all, the unending struggle between Good and Evil, which almost always end tragically in the death of the hero, generally in his hour of victory. Children should be allowed the great themes, which are also often tragic themes, which they can receive and make use of better than most adults can.
Standing aside, myself, and speaking not as the author but simply as a looker on, I am so glad, too, that the first winner of the Phoenix Award should be a historical novel. There seems to be a feeling against the genre nowadays; an idea that historical stories are simply escapist, and that because they are sited in the past, they have no relevance to the present day. In fact, of course, history and anything that helps to flesh out the bones of history and bring the past to life, has enormous relevance to the present day. To know where we started from and by what road we came to be where we are now – and to know this not only in an academic way but also with our emotions, not only with our heads but with our hearts, must surely be helping us in coping with the world in which we are today. And since history is a living and continuous process, must help us in our going forward into the part of history which is still in the future.
Once again, I give you my deepest thanks. I shall treasure my own particular phoenix, the first of its kind, as it deserves.
Rosemary Sutcliff, May 1985
