Elizabeth Coatsworth had also written of settlers, but Away Goes Sally (1934) is a
more comfortable story of a house being moved on runners in a Maine winter. Although
there are other stories about Sally, they do not have the sweep of the Wilder stories.
In the USA the Newbery medal had already been awarded to historical fiction, in 1929
to Eric P.Kelly for The Trumpeter of Krakow, telling in stately prose of an episode in
Polish history, and in 1936 it was awarded to Carol Ryrie Brink for Caddie Woodlawn.
(It is interesting to compare this book with the Wilder stories and note the same
preoccupation with food, in this case turkeys.) In 1943 Elizabeth Janet Gray won with
Adam of the Road, a lively tale of Chaucerian England, which today lacks a period feel,
and Esther Forbes won in 1944 with Johnny Tremain. Like Trease’s Bows Against the
Barons, this dealt with revolution, in this case the American War of Independence. The
complex background is slowly drawn against Johnny’s gradual involvement in the
conflict.
In Britain, the 1950s saw the flowering of differing talents who were to dominate the
scene, and during this period three authors of historical novels won the Carnegie medal;
Cynthia Harnett for The Woolpack in 1951, Ronald Welch for Knight Crusader in 1954
and Rosemary Sutcliff for The Lantern Bearers in 1959.
Cynthia Harnett’s interest was in the everyday life of ordinary people and it is this
wealth of detail which makes her books so interesting, if at times a little indigestible.
The Writing on the Hearth (1971) has as well, politics, witchcraft and sorcery which
speed the story along, and the reader sees also the growth of the Oxford colleges. William
Caxton appears in A Load of Unicorn (1959), a story of resistance to change by the
scriveners to his newfangled printing methods. Rosemary Sutcliff began her writing
career with The Queen Elizabeth Story in 1950, followed by The Armourer’s House (1951)
and Brother Dusty-Feet (1952), her first story to deal with comradeship between young
men. Simon (1953), deals with a friendship in a fair minded account of the Civil War.
The Eagle of the Ninth (1954) is based on two episodes of Romano-British history, using
which she constructed her picture of the British tribes under a Roman army of
occupation, and in which the greatness of her talent emerges. There is a portrait of a
friendship again, this time between Esca, the freed slave, and Marcus, who go north to
find the lost eagle of his father’s regiment; also a recurring theme from this point on, of a
young man coping with some kind of handicap. The Silver Branch (1957), and The
Lantern Bearers (1959), linked stories, continue these themes, the latter being almost an
adult book in which Aquila overcomes the bitterness at his father’s murder and the
abduction of his sister and comes to maturity with the beginning of Britain.
Rosemary Sutcliff had a talent for making the past come alive through her
descriptions, dialogue and a sense of place. In a few words she painted the landscape for
the reader, for example, ‘the wind from the east laying the moorland grasses over all one
way’ (133). Many of the books are set in the north of England, on Hadrian’s Wall, but
she also memorably used the Sussex Downs in Warrior Scarlet (1958) and Knight’s Fee
(1960). Carolyn Horowitz talks about Rosemary Sutcliff’s ‘acute sense of place...a feeling
of belonging to a certain landscape becomes a vital part of the plot structure. By the
time the novel is finished the reader feels homesick, not only for a certain essence of
country and climate, but for another time’ (142).
TYPES AND GENRES 367