Talk:Rosemary Sutcliff

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I am quite happy to turn all those red links blue and summarise the books I know. And I'm putting together little wikipedia entries for each. But before I put them into Wikipedia, I wondered whether in fact there is "enough" to say about each of them. I am a huge fan of Sutcliff and will cheerfully fill in the details for each one. But I have seen connected series of fairly short entries come up on the Votes for Deletion page very often, generally with the label 'fancruft'.

Is it better to have one (or two) pages covering the lot to avoid this? Or shall I just press ahead and make lots of little entries? All some of them would currently amount to is date, ISBN, very very brief plot, awards won, and whether there were any radio/television adaptations (that I know of). And quite a few of her books neither won awards nor were adapted for broadcast. So they will of necessity be short.

Thoughts? Comments?

Thanks for all your good work on Sutcliff Telsa! By the way, maybe I missed it but is Margret Meek's book on Sutcliff one of your sources? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kirbycairo (talk • contribs) 15:12, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Telsa 10:14, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

Too late now. Done three. You still have time to comment before I do another half-dozen, because my fingers are tired now! Telsa 16:42, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

Telsa. Sorry you got no earlier response. They are great books and deeply atmospheric. I read them all while I was aged between 10 and 12 years old - I am now 53. Slight issue with them is that they convey an impression of Roman Britain which may be misleading. The characterisation is all about people in the 1930s and 40s. A similar case is that of Wilbur Smith novels, which give people an impression of life in white dominated South Africa and Rhodesia which is entirely incorrect - but which many people believe to be the truth. That said, maybe people in Roman Britain were like Brits in the 30s and 40s?. How does anyone know?. All the best. Bob BScar23625 21:14, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Human genetics and Sutcliff

it may be more than 30s and 40s characterisation, Bob: advances in human genetics as summarised in Nicholas Wade´s "Before the Dawn" (2006)may overturn beliefs about Celts, Beaker Folk, Romans and Saxons and their relative roles AD 43-AD 600. Sutcliff, after all, died just before genetic fingerprinting was invented and mtDNA had not been discovered as a time clock yet either.Aelle

Is the point you are making that people in Roman Britain were fundamentally the same as us?.

But, if you compare a 1930s film with a modern film set in the 1930s - the difference is striking. Somehow, the modern film just does not seem authentic. My point is that historical novels are often more a reflection of the times in which they were written than the time in which they were set. Bob BScar23625 20:52, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Out of curiosity, I checked out your reference. I guess the point you are making is this. Sutcliff represented the emergence of Anglo-Saxon England from Romano Britain as a process of ethnic cleansing. At one stage, archaeology and place name analysis suggested that Sutcliff was wrong, and the process was more one of cultural assimilation. For example, it can be demonstrated that Celtic people were living in the London area until well into the Saxon era (note the origins of the place name "Wallington"). The logic here being that ethnic cleansing is a modern concept, alien to the 45 - 600 AD period. But, DNA evidence has now established that ethnic cleansing did happen in Dark Ages Britain. Sutcliff's appreciation was right.

However, that wasn't what I was getting at. When I read the dialogue in Sutcliff's books, I hear plummy home-county voices from the 1930s and 40s. Bob BScar23625 09:15, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Frontier Wolf

Even though this book was published much later than the other Eagle books, isn't it considered part of the Eagle of the Ninth series? I think that its plot would place the book between The Silver Branch and The Lantern Bearers. Viviena 06:31, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Resolved

some time ago. Six years later we make it one of eight Eagle books, and third in ficthistorical sequence (as suggested here).

Classification within the list of books remains a problem, as it does in the linked book articles (although Frontier Wolf remains a redlink). See the next section.

--P64 (talk) 00:28, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Sword at Sunset - classification

I haven't read the other novels in the series, but there is a problem with classifying Sword At Sunset only under the Eagle of the Ninth heading: it's an Arthurian novel, and it's usually considered one of the very best Arthurian novels ever written. It should probably appear under both listings, or with a note that it is also an Arthurian novel. 4.225.129.95 10:37, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Six years later we list Sword of Sunset three times: as part of the Eagle series, as an Arthurian novel, and as a novel for adults.

for adults. Here --and also at The Lantern Bearers but nowhere else, yet-- I have added the 1986 "Modern Arthurian Literature" interview as a reference [ref name=taliesin] and used it for the unusual point that The Lantern Bearers is officially for children while its sequel Sword at Sunset is officially for adults.

Arthurian. Here I have also expanded the list/subsection Rosemary Sutcliff#Arthurian novels to include all seven books named in the preface to that interview. Two are also listed Eagle books.

Our placement of these Eagle novels in series is now quite inconsistent. We have articles on six of the eight books; five give no series name and one gives two names for two series. (See The Lantern Bearers where we say both "Roman Britain", source and scope unkonwn, and "Marcus" for a series of four (following ISFDB, which is my 2012 work).)

Within the six book articles we say, for example,

"The Silver Branch follows The Eagle of the Ninth and precedes "Frontier Wolf", The Lantern Bearers and Sword at Sunset."

This constructs a series of five books.

--P64 (talk) 00:28, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Birthplace East Clandon

Previously we said West Clandon in templates {{infobox writer}} and {{persondata}}; East Clandon in prose. Today I moved her to East Clandon thruout, per the biographical sketch, ref name=degrummond. Our ref name=isfdb says West Clandon but we may be its source.

Probably we have a more credible source for East Clandon in External links, I see now, namely Life at RosemarySutcliff.com "Curated by Anthony Lawton: godson, cousin & literary executor". This should be promoted to a formal [ref name=life] and used in-line at this point and probably elsewhere.

--P64 (talk) 22:42, 28 July 2013 (UTC)