Recent Entries

The Genesis of The Witch's Brat

In a reprint edition of Rosemary Sutcliff's medieval novel The Witch's Brat there's a little piece explaining how the book came to be written:

"Rosemary Sutcliff says she first met Rahere, King Henry I's jester, in Rudyard Kipling's Rewards and Fairies. 'I was about six years old at the time, and have loved him dearly ever since.' She always knew that she would write about him herself one day, and this feeling increased after a visit to his tomb in the church of St Bartholomew the Great in London's Smithfield, close beside the hospital he founded. For years the project remained unfulfilled, until the Church of England Children's Society asked her to write a serial for their magazine. Wondering what she would write about, 'I suddenly realized the time had come to tell the story of the King's Jester who turned to God and founded the great hospital of St Bartholomew. Lovel, the boy who follows at Rahere's heels, came into my head, and of course the book is really his story; but it is Rahere's story too.'

"The Witch's Brat was originally written as a serial, and later re-written to make a novel, since 'it had peaks at the end of each instalment and was all the wrong shape for a book.' It was first published as a book in 1970."

It would be interesting to read this magazine serial version and see the differences from the book. Letter 51 of the Toronto Public Library's Rosemary Sutcliff fonds mentions the serial story on 24 April 1968. But I haven't been able to find out much about this Children's Society magazine (it may have been called Gateway ?)

Any fans of The Witch's Brat about?

The Horse Lord's Appendix Removal

Hello, gentle readers, I'm back with another round of "Let's Compare Editions".

When I re-read The Mark of the Horse Lord recently, I was both pleased and indignant to discover that all this time, some editions have contained an appendix of "Places Mentioned in the Story" that is not present in the paperback I originally read. It translates the novel's "ancient" or invented place names into their modern equivalents. There was no need for me to have been quite so confused by the finer points of Earra-Ghyll geography as I always was!

Thanks to Internet Archive I was able to look at a few more editions and I have formed a hypothesis which I would like your help in checking. The hypothesis is this: UK editions of The Mark of the Horse Lord are descended from the 1965 Oxford University Press edition and contain this appendix, while most US editions are descended from the 1965 H.Z. Walck edition and don't contain the appendix. (Predicted exceptions: 1. Puffin paperbacks that appeared simultaneously in the UK and US, which I would guess were essentially identical. 2. A UK omnibus which perhaps drops the "extras" to save space.)

Here is a list of the editions I know of, and I'm hoping you folk can clear up some of the question-marked details:
( Read more... )

Broader questions: did you read The Mark of the Horse Lord with or without the appendix, and did you get lost in the Highlands? (If you know which crag is which in the battle of Glen Croe, please explain it to me...) How much do you care about following a story's geography?

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resources: sutcliff out-of-print

Frontier Wolf: the 1983 author's note

(ETA: I've corrected my statement below about the first editions.)

I'm re-reading Frontier Wolf at the moment, and I happened to wonder if the author's note was originally placed before the story, as in my US 2008 Front Street paperback, or after it, as in my UK 2013 Random House e-book. So I looked for the first edition on Internet Archive and found that it appeared at the front of the original UK 1980 Oxford University Press and US 1981 Dutton hardcover editions. (It's not in their tables of contents, but don't be fooled like I was!) But the 1983 OUP paperback has a revised version of the note as its afterword, copyrighted 1983.

More importantly, the 1983 afterword is longer than the author's note in the other editions. Four middle paragraphs of it (from 'Almost on the outskirts of Edinburgh' to 'First Attacotti Frontier Scouts'), describing which aspects of the setting are historical and which fictional, are nearly identical to the original note. But the beginning and ending of the essay, describing the inspiration for the book and its importance to the author, were new and surprising to me, and perhaps to you also.

The full text (about 1,150 words) is below the cut. And if you have another edition of Frontier Wolf, I'm curious to know which version of the author's note, if any, it contains.

( Read more... )

Wikia -> Miraheze...?

Wikia seems to have got worse and worse in terms of slathering everything with impossible quantities of ads.

I just found out about the existence of https://meta.miraheze.org/wiki/Miraheze, a non-profit, no-ads mediawiki host, and I wondered about the possibility of copying the great Sutcliff wiki content over to it.

I think much of the work on the wikia site was done by Hedgebird, but I'm sure there have been many contributors: this seemed like the best place to float the idea tentatively.

Anyone got an old edition of Outcast?

I re-read Outcast recently and noticed some eccentric spellings I hadn't ever noticed before. It turned out that the 2012 Oxford University Press (UK) e-book I was reading and the 1995 Farrar Strauss & Giroux (US) paperback I had previously read differ slightly on these words. I also looked at a 1999 Oxford paperback edition, which predictably agreed with the Oxford e-book. I'm curious to know how far back these textual variations between UK and US editions date. So I'm hoping that some bored readers might a) have older editions of Outcast and b) be willing to check a few words in the text!

( Five words )

To me it looks as if the FSG text corrected (in some cases hypercorrected) spelling errors in the OUP text. Misspellings of loanwords and proper names are fairly plentiful in Sutcliff novels. (Spelling in general was not Rosemary Sutcliff's strong suit, according to a correspondent of hers.) But without looking at the oldest editions – OUP in the UK, H.Z. Walck in the US – it's hard to tell. It could be that the original OUP text was fine and these are misprints in later editions.

So, if anyone feels like helping with this, please tell me what edition you're looking at and which spelling it contains!

(I'm not sure if anyone here is interested in like... Tolkien fandom levels of nerdery when it comes to Sutcliff. So if you read this far, thanks for indulging me.)

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statistics

Sutcliff Statistics: Rosemary Sutcliff 2021!

Greetings!

As usual, the end of the year is time for merry Sutcliff data.

sutcliff_space brings some current statistics on the state of fandom: counting the transformative works posted on AO3 for all Rosemary Sutcliff book canons. Here comes an aggregated list of fandoms by the number of works.

This is the fifth time such an overview is completed. Previous posts were made in November 2017 [see here], in December 2018 [see here], in December 2019 [see here] and in December 2020 [see here]. The first two probes of 2017 and 2018 were done pre-Yuletide; and the next two, of 2019 and 2020, were post-Yuletide, including Yuletide data. In 2021, the data was collected pre-Yuletide again.

The total number of fanworks on AO3 has gone up by 20 compared to the time of the previous probe into the depths of the archive (from 544 in December 2020 to 564 in December 2021).

The dynamics are as follows:
from 433 in November, 2017
to 472 in December, 2018
to 500 in December, 2019
to 544 in December, 2020
to 564 in December 2021.

1. The Eagle of the Ninth (314 works)

2. Frontier Wolf (102 works)

3. The Lantern Bearers (18 works)

4. The Silver Branch (18 works)

5. The Mark of the Horse Lord (15 works)

6. Blood Feud (14 works)

7. Sword at Sunset (14 works)

8. Outcast (13 works)

9. The Shining Company (8 works)

10. Dawn Wind (6 works)

11. The Fugitives (6 works)

12. Sword Song (6 works)

13. Knight's Fee (5 works)

14. The Truce of the Games (4 works)

15. Warrior Scarlet (4 works)

16. A Circlet of Oak Leaves (3 works)

17. The Witch's Brat (3 works)

18. Blood and Sand (2 works)

19. The Rider of the White Horse (2 works)

20. The Armourer's House (1 work)

21. The Chief’s Daughter (1 work)

22. The High Deeds of Finn Mac Cool (1 work)

23. The Shield Ring (1 work)

24. The Sword and the Circle (1 work)

25. Flame-Coloured Taffeta (1 work)

26. Sun Horse Moon Horse (1 work)

Some numbers have changed, but our Top 10 remains the same as last year!

A variety of Sutcliff works are represented in book fandom so far, from long novels to tiny short stories, from well-known to really obscure. Notable dynamics:

New works (20 in total) (listed by volume of new output per fandom):

The Eagle of the Ninth +9 (from 305 to 314)

Frontier Wolf +4 (from 98 to 102 works)

The Fugitives +2 (from 4 to 6 works)

A Circlet of Oak Leaves +2 (from 1 to 3 works)

The Shining Company +1 (from 7 to 8 works)

Sword Song +1 (from 5 to 6 works)

The Truce of the Games +1 (from 3 to 4 works)

As you can see, only 7 fandoms had new fanworks created for them (compared to 9 fandoms having new works last year). Overall, there are 20 new works (compared to 44 last year). No new Sutcliff canons have been added to the current landscape of transformative works.

So this is officially the lowest total output number in our brief recorded history. Dramatic! Exciting? Motivating to explore?

What do you think of the output dynamic? Is there a Sutcliff work you'd like to see celebrated more? Do tell in comments!

And congratulations to everyone in Sutcliff fandom – it is a small kaleidoscopic fandom, but it is alive!

Entry tags:

resources: sutcliff out-of-print

A Little Dog Like You (1987)

A Little Dog Like You is a story of about 4000 words Sutcliff published in 1987, as a little illustrated book. It's about the efforts of a bereaved dog owner and her beloved chihuahua to be reunited in his next life. It has some clear autobiographical elements and purports to be true.

( A few notes )

( Read the story... )

Entry tags:

resources: about sutcliff

Rosemary Sutcliff – A Personal Memoir (1994)

This 1250-word essay by Jeffrey Aldridge was written for the collection The Best of Bookmark: Children's Writers Talk About Their Work, material from the Edinburgh-based magazine about children's literature he edited with Pauline Brown and Robbie Robertson, which also included Rosemary Sutcliff's piece "Novelist's Hat and Minstrel's Bonnet". His essay gives a glimpse of Sutcliff from the outside, and also records remarks by the eminent historical novelist Dorothy Dunnett.

(This Desert Island Discs interview gives a few further details on how Sutcliff learned to write about things Scottish).

From the book's introduction, some context for their acquaintance: "Sadly, of course, Rosemary Sutcliff is no longer with us. She and I corresponded regularly, following her first contribution to Bookmark 4 – she was a subscriber, too, saying that she always looked forward to the next issue. I always intended to have an extended interview with her but the opportunity never arose. My personal memoir which concludes this volume stands as an inadequate substitute."

( Read more... )

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One of the wheelchair brigade (1970)

We owe this one to

tanaqui, digging in the depths of the digital archives: thank you again, Tanaqui, for taking the trouble to find it.

"One of the wheelchair brigade" is a 1000-word article by Rosemary Sutcliff published in The Times (her usual newspaper, according to her godson Anthony Lawton) a few days before the UK passed the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act, a bill that expanded basic services for people with disabilities. In it she describes her own condition and some of the problems it caused beyond just the physical.

You can read a quick explanation of the Act on health.org.uk. Details of the encounter with the patronizing lady can be found in Sutcliff's later "Emotions in Focus" piece. Her memoir, Blue Remembered Hills, is also a good place to learn more about how her disability affected her life (though if that sounds depressing, rest assured the book is anything but.) And I assume it's just a coincidence, but 1970 was also the year Sutcliff published The Witch's Brat, starring one of her most visibly disabled heroes: Lovel, an infirmarian monk with a congenital hunched back and club foot, who invents a medieval version of physical therapy for an injured patient.

( Read more... )

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Novelist's Hat and Minstrel's Bonnet (1983)

"Novelist's Hat and Minstrel's Bonnet" is an essay of about 1350 words in which Rosemary Sutcliff reflects on her evolving style of writing, and the relationship between her historical fiction and her retellings of myth and legend.

Sutcliff wrote the essay for Bookmark 11, the September 1983 issue of an Edinburgh-based periodical about children's literature she apparently subscribed to and had written for at least once already (Bookmark 4). It was reprinted in the 1994 collection The Best of Bookmark: Children's Writers Talk About Their Work. Also included is "Rosemary Sutcliff – A Personal Memoir" by the editor Jeffrey Aldridge, which I'll post in a few days.

(NB I've ventured to make a couple of edits to the Best of Bookmark text: "has always been my best beloved" instead of "had always been", "of its own accord" instead of "on its own accord". As always, please feel free to point out typos or other issues.)

( Read more... )

Entry tags:

fests

5 Sutcliff options in Fandom Growth Exchange!

Sign-ups for Fandom Growth Exchange are open until July 19, and there are 5 exciting Sutcliff fandoms to offer/request from the tagset!

A Circlet of Oak Leaves - Rosemary Sutcliff

Nominated relationships:

✔ Aracos & Felix (A Circlet of Oak Leaves)
✔ Aracos/Felix (A Circlet of Oak Leaves)
✔ Felix/Young Dacian Medic (A Circlet of Oak Leaves)
✔ Felix & Young Dacian Medic (A Circlet of Oak Leaves)
✔ Aracos/Young Dacian Medic (A Circlet of Oak Leaves)
✔ Aracos & Young Dacian Medic (A Circlet of Oak Leaves)
✔ Aracos & Diomedes (A Circlet of Oak Leaves)
✔ Aracos/Diomedes (A Circlet of Oak Leaves)
✔ Aracos & Nasik (A Circlet of Oak Leaves)
✔ Aracos/Nasik (A Circlet of Oak Leaves)
✔ Gavrus & Hirpinius (A Circlet of Oak Leaves)
✔ Gavrus/Hirpinius (A Circlet of Oak Leaves)
✔ Aracos & Young Sensitive Auxiliary Cavalryman (A Circlet of Oak Leaves)
✔ Aracos/Young Sensitive Auxiliary Cavalryman (A Circlet of Oak Leaves)
✔ Aracos & Lyr (A Circlet of Oak Leaves)
✔ Aracos/Lyr (A Circlet of Oak Leaves)
✔ Aracos & Cordaella (A Circlet of Oak Leaves)
✔ Diomedes & Felix (A Circlet of Oak Leaves)
✔ Young Dacian Medic & Young Sensitive Auxiliary Cavalryman (A Circlet of Oak Leaves)
✔ Young Dacian Medic/Young Sensitive Auxiliary Cavalryman (A Circlet of Oak Leaves)

The Truce of the Games - Rosemary Sutcliff

Nominated relationships:

✔ Amyntas/Leon (Truce of the Games)
✔ Amyntas & Leon (Truce of the Games)
✔ Amyntas & Ariston (Truce of the Games)
✔ Ariston & Eudorus (Truce of the Games)
✔ Ariston & Leon (Truce of the Games)
✔ Eudorus & Hippias (Truce of the Games)
✔ Eudorus & Leon (Truce of the Games)
✔ Hippias & Leon (Truce of the Games)

The Fugitives - Rosemary Sutcliff

Nominated relationships:

✔ The Fugitive & Lucian (The Fugitives)
✔ The Centurion/Marcipor (The Fugitives)
✔ The Centurion/Pilus Prior (The Fugitives)
✔ The Centurion/The Fugitive (The Fugitives)
✔ The Fugitive/Marcipor (The Fugitives)
✔ The Fugitive/Pilus Prior (The Fugitives)
✔ Marcipor/Pilus Prior (The Fugitives)
✔ The Centurion & Lucian (The Fugitives)
✔ The Centurion & The Fugitive (The Fugitives)
✔ Marcipor & Pilus Prior (The Fugitives)
✔ Syrius the Dog & None (The Fugitives)

The Man Who Died At Sea - Rosemary Sutcliff

Nominated relationships:

✔ Young Seer & None (The Man Who Died At Sea)
✔ Young Seer's Brother living in India & None (The Man Who Died At Sea)
✔ Young Seer & Young Seer's Brother living in India (The Man Who Died At Sea)
✔ Mr X & None (The Man Who Died At Sea)
✔ The Officer & None (The Man Who Died At Sea)
✔ The Doctor & None (The Man Who Died At Sea)
✔ The Doctor/The Officer (The Man Who Died At Sea)
✔ The Doctor & Young Seer (The Man Who Died At Sea)
✔ The Officer & Young Seer (The Man Who Died At Sea)
✔ The Doctor & The Officer (The Man Who Died At Sea)

Swallows in the Spring - Rosemary Sutcliff

Nominated relationships:

✔ Dexius & Fulvius (Swallows in the Spring)
✔ Dexius/Fulvius (Swallows in the Spring)
✔ Dexius & None (Swallows in the Spring)
✔ Fulvius & None (Swallows in the Spring)
✔ Stripey & None (Swallows in the Spring)
✔ Florianus & None (Swallows in the Spring)

Entry tags:

fests

Sutcliff in Juletide on AO3

Sign ups for Juletide 2021 are still open today! Sign-ups close on July 5th, 23:59 GMT (07:59PM EDT)! ( It's like Yuletide, but it's small and fast and in July. )

There are Sutcliff fandoms in the tagset(s): The Eagle, Eagle of the Ninth, Frontier Wolf, The Silver Branch!

Sign up for a Sutcliff quick fix in July! :D

Countdown to sign-ups closing.

Midsummer's Eve (Happy "birthday", Rosemary Sutcliff!)

You may have read that Rosemary Sutcliff was born on December 14th and sure, that is factually true. But according to her godson Anthony Lawton, she liked to celebrate her birthday on June 23rd, which was her mother Nessie's birthday.

It's also Midsummer's Eve to the traditional British date of Midsummer's Day or St. John's Day on June 24th. Midsummer's Eve is a fairy time in several of Sutcliff's books: either there are eldritch goings-on, or people have special powers (like Nessie) because it's their birthday.

( Examples! )

Any other Midsummer magic you can think of, readers?

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resources: sutcliff out-of-print

A sample of The Queen Elizabeth Story (1950)

The Queen Elizabeth Story has, as far as I know, been out of print for decades, and is I think Rosemary Sutcliff's only novel not yet to have had an e-book release. As it's not easy for many people to find, I thought I'd give you a taste of it. I think you'll find these first two chapters something of a departure, in one way in particular, from the most familiar books of Sutcliff's canon (or rather that later books were a departure from this one.)

( Read some notes )( Read the chapters )

Entry tags:

links

The Shield Ring and The Secret Valley

I've read more than once that Rosemary Sutcliff's Anglo-Norse vs. Anglo-Normans novel The Shield Ring was founded on a book called The Secret Valley by one Nicholas Size. The Wikipedia page for Buttermere, for example, which calls it a "dramatized history," mentions their connection. Elsewhere his book is called a novel and this puzzled me a bit, as in this essay Sutcliff described her inspiration for The Shield Ring as "a little privately published handbook" – i.e. a work of non-fiction. Detective Me concluded she might really have meant Size's earlier treatment of the material, a little booklet mentioned on his Wikipedia page.

Of course this slight discrepancy might be moot if I could read Size's books, but I've never found a copy online (for free; there are limits to curiosity.) But now I have found a relevant excerpt from The Secret Valley in an anthology! "The Battle of Rannardale" covers the entire timeframe and alleged historical background of The Shield Ring. It's in My Favourite Stories of Lakeland edited by Melvyn Bragg (the radio host) and you can read it on Internet Archive.

But in case your curiosity on this point does not extend quite that far, I have extracted four bits that will sound familiar to readers of The Shield Ring. Casual readers like myself, that is; textual experts might well find more amid Size's welter of geographic details that Sutcliff could have cribbed. Non-readers will find these very vaguely spoilery.

"Everybody knew that sooner or later the valley would be attacked from the North, but the novel defense which the Earl had been perfecting for years gave them confidence... This defense which pleased them so much was nothing less than the diversion of the road or track from over the shoulder of Rannardale Knotts, near the lake, to a narrow and dangerous valley close at hand, where everything was prepared for a great killing."
"Here sat Earl Boethar with his son Gille, and his trusty brother Ackin watching the approach of the Norman army." (Sutcliff calls these characters Buthar, Gille, and Aikin in The Shield Ring. Boethar/Buthar at least is a local legend, but the internet hasn't informed me whether Size invented his brother and son. Ranulf Meschin is another familiar name, but it's because he definitely historically existed.)
"Such a thing was, however, only likely to happen if some traitor had betrayed the preparations, and none of the poor souls the Normans captured would be likely to say a word even under torture." (Embryonic Bjorn?)
"[T]he archers on the ridge were reinforced by women". (Zygotic Frytha?)

I'm still not sure which of Size's books Rosemary Sutcliff read, the novel or the little booklet. But I can certainly believe that one way or another Size's work was the basis for The Shield Ring.

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fests

Psychic Wolves for Lupercalia - Decadence Incarnate (Year 10)

And once again - it's the 10th anniversary, in fact!

Very relevant for many Sutcliff canons and for Sutcliff fandom in general!

Come create for Psychic Wolves for Lupercalia - A Multi-Fandom Mini-Fest! Now in its TENTH year of howling at the moon.

- Lupercalia is a classical Roman festival that took place around the Ides of February (Feb. 13-15th) celebrating fertility and the wolf who was the symbolic mother of Rome's founder.
- If you're writing a story, aim for about 500 words. Ideally, there should be wolves in it. They should be psychic. They should at least have the potential of causing sympathetic lust in the humans, elves, or other species they're bonded to.
- In the source canon (A Companion to Wolves), the wolves communicate their emotions with their bonded humans and the humans who are bonded to wolves in the same pack, up to and including causing them to have sex with each other. You don't have to read a specific book to write your own take on psychic wolves. You don't have to write A/B/O. You can interpret the concept the way you like.

Psychic Wolves | Cheerleading

Erstwhile Sutcliff fanworks with psychic wolves
This fest is an opportunity to explore a plot device which meshes really well with wildly different settings and can be used for very different metaphorical meanings. Earlier, six works in four different Sutcliff fandoms were created:

Chosen by

demon_rum (Eagle of the Ninth)
Pack Dynamics by

demon_rum (Eagle of the Ninth)
The Wolf With No Name by

sistermine (Eagle of the Ninth)
The Fond-Name by

sineala (Frontier Wolf)
Theft by

sineala (The Lantern Bearers)
Walk Without Turning by

katherine (The Fugitives)

Psychic Wolves for Lupercalia Feb. 13-15

Entry tags:

Sutcliff on Coffee and Circuses podcast

The Roman-themed podcast Coffee and Circuses made an episode about Rosemary Sutcliff and her cultural impact a few weeks ago, for the centennial of her birth on December 14th.

There's a good description there, so I'll only add a potential spoiler warning for the books discussed in the episode: the Roman novels of course, the other Dolphin Ring sequels, and her memoir.

Fic: Private Devotions (FW, Alexios/Lucius)

I posted this to AO3 a week ago, and clean forgot to link to it here until now. A belated Yuletide treat-cum-New Year's gift for

silverink.

Private Devotions (2675 words) by Verecunda
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Frontier Wolf - Rosemary Sutcliff
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Alexios Flavius Aquila/Lucius (Frontier Wolf)
Characters: Alexios Flavius Aquila, Lucius (Frontier Wolf)
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Lucius Lives!, Fluff, Love Confessions, Cuddling & Snuggling
Summary: One year after not dying at the bridge, Lucius means to give thanks to God for his survival. But instead of prayer, he finds his mind full of other thoughts.

Entry tags:

statistics

Sutcliff Statistics: Rosemary Sutcliff 2020!

Greetings!

Here are some current statistics on the state of fandom: counting the transformative works posted on AO3 for all Rosemary Sutcliff book canons. Here comes an aggregated list of fandoms by the number of works.

This is the fourth time such an overview is completed. Previous posts were made three years ago, in November 2017 [see here], two years ago, in December 2018 [see here], a year ago, in December 2019 [see here]. The first two probes were done pre-Yuletide and the last two, this included, were post-Yuletide, including Yuletide data.

The total number of fanworks on AO3 has gone up by 44 compared to the time of the previous probe into the depths of the archive (from 500 in December, 2019 to 544 in December 2020).

The dynamics are as follows:
from 433 in November, 2017
to 472 in December, 2018
to 500 in December, 2019
to 544 in December, 2020.

1. The Eagle of the Ninth (305 works)

2. Frontier Wolf (98 works)

3. The Lantern Bearers (18 works)

4. The Silver Branch (18 works)

5. The Mark of the Horse Lord (15 works)

6. Blood Feud (14 works)

7. Sword at Sunset (14 works)

8. Outcast (13 works)

9. The Shining Company (7 works)

10. Dawn Wind (6 works)

11. Knight's Fee (5 works)

12. Sword Song (5 works)

13. Warrior Scarlet (4 works)

14. The Fugitives (4 works)

15. The Truce of the Games (3 works)

16. The Witch's Brat (3 works)

17. Blood and Sand (2 works)

18. The Rider of the White Horse (2 works)

19. The Sword and the Circle (1 work)

20. The Armourer's House (1 work)

21. Sun Horse Moon Horse (1 work)

22. A Circlet of Oak Leaves (1 work)

23. Flame-Coloured Taffeta (1 work)

24. The Chief’s Daughter (1 work)

25. The High Deeds of Finn Mac Cool (1 work)

26. The Shield Ring (1 work)

A variety of Sutcliff works are represented in book fandom so far, from long novels to tiny short stories, from well-known to really obscure. Notable dynamics:

New works (44 in total) (listed by volume of new output per fandom):

The Eagle of the Ninth +24 (from 281 to 305)

Frontier Wolf +11 (from 87 to 98 works)

The Fugitives +3 (from 1 to 4 works)

Outcast +1 (from 12 to 13 works)

The Shining Company +1 (from 6 to 7 works)

Warrior Scarlet +1 (from 3 to 4 works)

The Chief’s Daughter +1 (from 0 to 1 work) new fandom!

The High Deeds of Finn Mac Cool +1 (from 0 to 1 work) new fandom!

The Shield Ring +1 (from 0 to 1 work) new fandom!

As you can see, more than twice as many fandoms had new fanworks created for them compared to last year (nine this year compared to four last year). It appears that there were three new Sutcliff book canons showcased on the fandom arena for the very first time!

What do you think of the output dynamic? Is there a Sutcliff work you'd like to see celebrated more? Do tell in comments!

And congratulations to everyone in Sutcliff fandom – 2020 was a Sutcliff anniversary year.

🐬 Sutcliff Ask Meme 🐬

Happy 100th birthday to beloved author Rosemary Sutcliff (born December 14, 1920). In honour of the occasion, I’ve put together a Q&A (also posted on Tumblr) for any admirers of her books to take part in.

Rules: answer the questions, tag anyone who you think might want to play along, and - if you like - add a question of your own.

1. Your favourite work by Sutcliff.
2. Your favourite bearer of the dolphin ring.
3. A supporting or background character you love.
4. Your favourite animal companion.
5. Is there any setting you find especially memorable?
6. Wild geese flighting and striped native rugs: is there a classic Sutcliff motif that never fails to warm your heart when it appears?
7. The natural world is a vivid presence in all her work. Is there any particular nature description that sticks in your mind?
8. Biggest tearjerker. (Happy or sad tears!)
9. How did you first discover Sutcliff?
10. What is it about her work that appeals to you the most?
11. A book that deserves more love.
12. A book you haven’t read yet, but want to.
13. Which book(s) would you love to get a film or TV adaptation?
14. Is there any historical period, incident, or figure you wish she’d written about?
15. Rec a Sutcliff-themed fanwork (fic, art, vid, etc.) to share with fellow fans.

And lastly, just out of interest... how far is it from Venta to the mountains?