Sutcliff's essays and interviews, a list
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sutcliff_spaceThis is the most complete list of Rosemary Sutcliff’s essays and interviews that I know of.* Wherever possible, I’ve linked to both the original publication if it's online, and the more easily readable reposts here or elsewhere.
I sourced it from various places: library catalogue WorldCat.org, Barbara L. Talcroft’s monograph Death of the Corn King, Anthony Lawton’s blog, Sandra Garside-Neville’s bibliography, Something About the Author (from which I haven't been able to check out every lead), JSTOR. Other bibliographies I’ve checked give no additional titles.
But I would be rather surprised if there weren’t more essays and interviews to be found. Sutcliff’s work at shorter than book length – i.e., in anthologies and periodicals, or other ephemera – isn’t well-documented online. Needless to say, if you know of any other articles by or interviews with Sutcliff, I’d like to hear about them.
At the end of the list, I give what further details I can aboutfive four essays I haven't got hold of, in case someone else wants to look for them. Naturally, if I ever come across them, I’ll link them here.
* One category of essays I have not included: Sutcliff’s introductions to other people’s books. That is another post.
Interviews
Two of these are articles founded on interviews, but they have enough original quotes from Sutcliff that I’m counting them here. Several of them don't, strictly speaking, really have titles in the original publications, but I had to call them something.
1. Elaine Moss, “Rosemary Sutcliff: A Love of Legend” in Books & Bookmen, 1960. Reprinted in Moss, Part of the Pattern: A Personal Journey Through the World of Children’s Books, 1960-1985, 1986. (1300 words)
2. Emma Fisher & Justin Wintle, "Rosemary Sutcliff" in The Pied Pipers: Interviews with the influential creators of children’s literature, 1974. (3500 words)
3. Cornelia Jones & Olivia R. Way, "Rosemary Sutcliff" in British Children’s Authors: Interviews at Home, 1976. (1700 words)
4. Article on BBC Television The Eagle of the Ninth miniseries, Radio Times, 3 September 1977.
5. "Rosemary Sutcliff" on Desert Island Discs presented by Roy Plomley, BBC Radio 4, 1 October 1983. Transcript. (4200 words)
6. Raymond H. Thompson, “Interview with Rosemary Sutcliff” in Avalon to Camelot, 1987. Reprinted in Thompson, Taliesin’s Successors: Interviews with Authors of Contemporary Arthurian Literature, The Camelot Project, 1999. (3000 words)
7. Pamela Lloyd, "Rosemary Sutcliff" in How Writers Write, 1987. (1700 words)
8. John Withrington, “An Interview with Rosemary Sutcliff” in Quondam et Futurus, Winter 1991. (2700 words)
Essays
And other bits and pieces, some of which are so slight as, again, not to have definite titles.
1. “Beginning with Beowulf” in The Horn Book Magazine, February 1953. (900 words)
2. “Combined Ops” in The Junior Bookshelf, July 1960. Reprinted in Only Connect: Readings on children’s literature, 1st & 2nd editions only, ed. Sheila Egoff, G.T. Stubbs & J.F. Ashley, 1969 & 1980. (1900 words)
3. “Writing a Historical Novel” (?) in Children’s Britannica, c. 1960-1973.
4. “Rosemary Sutcliff” in More Junior Authors, ed. Muriel Fuller, 1963. (500 words)
5. “Kipling for Children” in The Kipling Journal, December 1965. (2000 words)
6. “The Man Who Died at Sea” in The House of the Nightmare and Other Eerie Tales, ed. Kathleen Lines, 1968. (2000 words)
7. “One of the wheelchair brigade” in The Times, 4 May 1970. (1050 words)
8. “History is People” presented at Children’s Literature in Education conference, 1971. Reprinted in Children and Literature: Views and Reviews, ed. Virginia Haviland, 1973. (3900 words)
9. Untitled retrospective in A Sense of Story: Essays on Contemporary Writers of Children’s Books by John Rowe Townsend, 1971. (500 words)
10. “Lost Summer” in The Thorny Paradise: Writers on Writing for Children, ed. Edward Blishen, 1975. (1500 words)
11. “Still in the Making” in School Bookshop News, 4 March 1976.
12. “Emotions in Focus” exhibition programme guide, 1981.
13. Unknown title, in Bookmark 4, late 1970s.
14. “Kim” in Children’s Literature in Education, December 1982. Reprinted in Celebrating Children’s Literature in Education, ed. Geoff Fox, 1995. (2900 words)
15. “Novelist’s Hat and Minstrel’s Bonnet” in Bookmark 11, September 1983. Reprinted in The Best of ‘Bookmark’: Children’s Writers Talk About Their Work, ed. Jeffrey Aldridge, 1994. (1350 words)
16. Extended Afterword to Frontier Wolf in the 1983 Oxford University Press paperback edition (1150 words).
17. Phoenix Award address, 19 May 1985. Printed as “Rosemary Sutcliff’s thank-you address to the Children’s Literature Association at Ann Arbor, Michigan, 19th May 1985 upon receipt of the Phoenix Award”, Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, Winter 1986. Reprinted as “Address” in The Phoenix Award of the Children’s Literature Association, 1985-1989, ed. Alethea Helbig & Agnes Perkins, 1993. (900 words)
18. "Wisdom From on High" quote in Writing Historical Fiction by Rhona Martin, 1988. (83 words)
19. My Downs, Backwater Press, 1988.
20. “History and Time” presented at Travelers in Time conference, August 1989. Reprinted in Travelers in Time: Past, Present, and To Come, 1990. Reprinted in Historical Fiction for Children: Capturing the Past, ed. Fiona M. Collins & Judith Graham, 2001. (5800 words)
21. “Rosemary Sutcliff” in Speaking for Ourselves: Autobiographical Sketches by Notable Authors of Books for Young Adults, ed. Donald R. Gallo, 1990. (600 words)
The missing essays
In a library near you?
1. “Writing a Historical Novel” or “How to Write a Historical Novel” in Children’s Britannica, c. 1960-1973 (1st-3rd editions).
This article is described by commenter Elizabeth Lawrence (15 June 2018) on the official blog's bibliography post and by a LibraryThing user, under slightly different titles. It was published in the 2nd (1969) and/or 3rd (1973) editions of the Children’s Britannica encyclopedia, in the appendices along with other "how-to" bonus articles like these. (I have not seen the 1960 1st edition, but the 1988 4th edition doesn't have such appendices.) Unfortunately neither source gives the precise edition or volume of the multi-volume set in which to look for it. The appendices in the linked volume Abbey-Arabs pertain to Acting, Aircraft, Animals, and Aquariums, so presumably Sutcliff’s is in Ha-has—Hyenas for Historical Fiction, or some other subject keyword.
The article is NOT found in volumes 8, 13, or 15 to 18 of the 2nd edition; or vol. 1 or 7 of the 3rd edition.
2. “One of the wheelchair brigade” in The Times, 4 May 1970.
Update: Found bytanaqui! See the link above.
A clipping of this article is part of the Toronto Public Library’sRosemary Sutcliff fonds (letters and other material donated by her friend Christina Duff Stewart.) I assume that it relates to the UK’s Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act of 9 May 1970. It can also presumably be found in The Times Digital Archive, which seems to be accessible mainly through institutional subscription, i.e. in university libraries.
3. “Still in the Making” in School Bookshop News, 4 March 1976.
This article is listed in Something About the Author and formerly on WorldCat. School Bookshop News was a short-lived UK periodical issued by the School Bookshop Association, which replaced it in 1980 with Books for Keeps (see "The School Bookshop Association Revamped".) A full archive of the latter is available online, laudably, but not the earlier publication. The most substantial trace of the article I can find online is a 2012 blog post by Loty Petrovits, in Greek. It includes the quote, "η Βρετανή Rosemary Sutcliff δηλώνει: «Δε γράφω καθόλου για παιδιά παρά απλώς για τον εαυτό μου»”. I think this means something like, “the Briton Rosemary Sutcliff says, ‘I don’t write for other children, but only for myself’”.
4. “Novelist’s Hat and Minstrel’s Bonnet” in Bookmark 11, September 1983.
Update: Found it! And also found, in the introduction to The Best of Bookmark, that Sutcliff wrote at least one previous contribution to the periodical, in Bookmark 4. Its title and the date of the issue are not mentioned, but the magazine was launched in the late 1970s and had reached issue 11 by 1983.
This article is listed by Barbara L. Talcroft in her monograph Death of the Corn King and formerly on WorldCat. “Bookmark magazine”, as you might imagine, is difficult to search, but The Best of ‘Bookmark’ anthology edited by Jeffrey Aldridge isavailable used and in libraries. The cover is printed with quotes from the articles, and Sutcliff’s reads, “What, after all, c […] arfare, about horse management, men’s behaviour amon […]”. A review describes the book thusly: “The introduction surveys the history of Bookmark, a periodical founded in the late 1970s. Includes interviews with notable authors, their articles on their work, and a memoir of Sutcliff.”
5. My Downs, Backwater Press, 1988.
Originally written for radio in 1962, fifteen copies of this text were privately printed as an eight-page booklet and presented to friends for Christmas 1988. Copy no. 2, given to Christina Duff Stewart, is part of the Toronto Public Library’s Rosemary Sutcliff papers. The original radio broadcast on 19 August 1962 was fifteen minutes long and the BBC guide describes it as “Rosemary Sutcliff on the meaning of a countryside, historically and personally”.
Updated 31 May 2024.
I sourced it from various places: library catalogue WorldCat.org, Barbara L. Talcroft’s monograph Death of the Corn King, Anthony Lawton’s blog, Sandra Garside-Neville’s bibliography, Something About the Author (from which I haven't been able to check out every lead), JSTOR. Other bibliographies I’ve checked give no additional titles.
But I would be rather surprised if there weren’t more essays and interviews to be found. Sutcliff’s work at shorter than book length – i.e., in anthologies and periodicals, or other ephemera – isn’t well-documented online. Needless to say, if you know of any other articles by or interviews with Sutcliff, I’d like to hear about them.
At the end of the list, I give what further details I can about
* One category of essays I have not included: Sutcliff’s introductions to other people’s books. That is another post.
Interviews
Two of these are articles founded on interviews, but they have enough original quotes from Sutcliff that I’m counting them here. Several of them don't, strictly speaking, really have titles in the original publications, but I had to call them something.
1. Elaine Moss, “Rosemary Sutcliff: A Love of Legend” in Books & Bookmen, 1960. Reprinted in Moss, Part of the Pattern: A Personal Journey Through the World of Children’s Books, 1960-1985, 1986. (1300 words)
2. Emma Fisher & Justin Wintle, "Rosemary Sutcliff" in The Pied Pipers: Interviews with the influential creators of children’s literature, 1974. (3500 words)
3. Cornelia Jones & Olivia R. Way, "Rosemary Sutcliff" in British Children’s Authors: Interviews at Home, 1976. (1700 words)
4. Article on BBC Television The Eagle of the Ninth miniseries, Radio Times, 3 September 1977.
5. "Rosemary Sutcliff" on Desert Island Discs presented by Roy Plomley, BBC Radio 4, 1 October 1983. Transcript. (4200 words)
6. Raymond H. Thompson, “Interview with Rosemary Sutcliff” in Avalon to Camelot, 1987. Reprinted in Thompson, Taliesin’s Successors: Interviews with Authors of Contemporary Arthurian Literature, The Camelot Project, 1999. (3000 words)
7. Pamela Lloyd, "Rosemary Sutcliff" in How Writers Write, 1987. (1700 words)
8. John Withrington, “An Interview with Rosemary Sutcliff” in Quondam et Futurus, Winter 1991. (2700 words)
Essays
And other bits and pieces, some of which are so slight as, again, not to have definite titles.
1. “Beginning with Beowulf” in The Horn Book Magazine, February 1953. (900 words)
2. “Combined Ops” in The Junior Bookshelf, July 1960. Reprinted in Only Connect: Readings on children’s literature, 1st & 2nd editions only, ed. Sheila Egoff, G.T. Stubbs & J.F. Ashley, 1969 & 1980. (1900 words)
3. “Writing a Historical Novel” (?) in Children’s Britannica, c. 1960-1973.
4. “Rosemary Sutcliff” in More Junior Authors, ed. Muriel Fuller, 1963. (500 words)
5. “Kipling for Children” in The Kipling Journal, December 1965. (2000 words)
6. “The Man Who Died at Sea” in The House of the Nightmare and Other Eerie Tales, ed. Kathleen Lines, 1968. (2000 words)
7. “One of the wheelchair brigade” in The Times, 4 May 1970. (1050 words)
8. “History is People” presented at Children’s Literature in Education conference, 1971. Reprinted in Children and Literature: Views and Reviews, ed. Virginia Haviland, 1973. (3900 words)
9. Untitled retrospective in A Sense of Story: Essays on Contemporary Writers of Children’s Books by John Rowe Townsend, 1971. (500 words)
10. “Lost Summer” in The Thorny Paradise: Writers on Writing for Children, ed. Edward Blishen, 1975. (1500 words)
11. “Still in the Making” in School Bookshop News, 4 March 1976.
12. “Emotions in Focus” exhibition programme guide, 1981.
13. Unknown title, in Bookmark 4, late 1970s.
14. “Kim” in Children’s Literature in Education, December 1982. Reprinted in Celebrating Children’s Literature in Education, ed. Geoff Fox, 1995. (2900 words)
15. “Novelist’s Hat and Minstrel’s Bonnet” in Bookmark 11, September 1983. Reprinted in The Best of ‘Bookmark’: Children’s Writers Talk About Their Work, ed. Jeffrey Aldridge, 1994. (1350 words)
16. Extended Afterword to Frontier Wolf in the 1983 Oxford University Press paperback edition (1150 words).
17. Phoenix Award address, 19 May 1985. Printed as “Rosemary Sutcliff’s thank-you address to the Children’s Literature Association at Ann Arbor, Michigan, 19th May 1985 upon receipt of the Phoenix Award”, Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, Winter 1986. Reprinted as “Address” in The Phoenix Award of the Children’s Literature Association, 1985-1989, ed. Alethea Helbig & Agnes Perkins, 1993. (900 words)
18. "Wisdom From on High" quote in Writing Historical Fiction by Rhona Martin, 1988. (83 words)
19. My Downs, Backwater Press, 1988.
20. “History and Time” presented at Travelers in Time conference, August 1989. Reprinted in Travelers in Time: Past, Present, and To Come, 1990. Reprinted in Historical Fiction for Children: Capturing the Past, ed. Fiona M. Collins & Judith Graham, 2001. (5800 words)
21. “Rosemary Sutcliff” in Speaking for Ourselves: Autobiographical Sketches by Notable Authors of Books for Young Adults, ed. Donald R. Gallo, 1990. (600 words)
The missing essays
In a library near you?
1. “Writing a Historical Novel” or “How to Write a Historical Novel” in Children’s Britannica, c. 1960-1973 (1st-3rd editions).
This article is described by commenter Elizabeth Lawrence (15 June 2018) on the official blog's bibliography post and by a LibraryThing user, under slightly different titles. It was published in the 2nd (1969) and/or 3rd (1973) editions of the Children’s Britannica encyclopedia, in the appendices along with other "how-to" bonus articles like these. (I have not seen the 1960 1st edition, but the 1988 4th edition doesn't have such appendices.) Unfortunately neither source gives the precise edition or volume of the multi-volume set in which to look for it. The appendices in the linked volume Abbey-Arabs pertain to Acting, Aircraft, Animals, and Aquariums, so presumably Sutcliff’s is in Ha-has—Hyenas for Historical Fiction, or some other subject keyword.
The article is NOT found in volumes 8, 13, or 15 to 18 of the 2nd edition; or vol. 1 or 7 of the 3rd edition.
2. “One of the wheelchair brigade” in The Times, 4 May 1970.
Update: Found by
tanaqui! See the link above.A clipping of this article is part of the Toronto Public Library’s
3. “Still in the Making” in School Bookshop News, 4 March 1976.
This article is listed in Something About the Author and formerly on WorldCat. School Bookshop News was a short-lived UK periodical issued by the School Bookshop Association, which replaced it in 1980 with Books for Keeps (see "The School Bookshop Association Revamped".) A full archive of the latter is available online, laudably, but not the earlier publication. The most substantial trace of the article I can find online is a 2012 blog post by Loty Petrovits, in Greek. It includes the quote, "η Βρετανή Rosemary Sutcliff δηλώνει: «Δε γράφω καθόλου για παιδιά παρά απλώς για τον εαυτό μου»”. I think this means something like, “the Briton Rosemary Sutcliff says, ‘I don’t write for other children, but only for myself’”.
4. “Novelist’s Hat and Minstrel’s Bonnet” in Bookmark 11, September 1983.
Update: Found it! And also found, in the introduction to The Best of Bookmark, that Sutcliff wrote at least one previous contribution to the periodical, in Bookmark 4. Its title and the date of the issue are not mentioned, but the magazine was launched in the late 1970s and had reached issue 11 by 1983.
This article is listed by Barbara L. Talcroft in her monograph Death of the Corn King and formerly on WorldCat. “Bookmark magazine”, as you might imagine, is difficult to search, but The Best of ‘Bookmark’ anthology edited by Jeffrey Aldridge is
5. My Downs, Backwater Press, 1988.
Originally written for radio in 1962, fifteen copies of this text were privately printed as an eight-page booklet and presented to friends for Christmas 1988. Copy no. 2, given to Christina Duff Stewart, is part of the Toronto Public Library’s Rosemary Sutcliff papers. The original radio broadcast on 19 August 1962 was fifteen minutes long and the BBC guide describes it as “Rosemary Sutcliff on the meaning of a countryside, historically and personally”.
Updated 31 May 2024.
