two hundred public words 17/30

[maeve66]

I'm trying to get this post done long before midnight. That would be good

Comments

[oursin]

Sutcliff wrote a fascinating autobiography (?called something like Blue Remembered Hills?). She had childhood rheumatoid arthritis and was, I think, a wheechair user for most of her life. There was a prospect of marriage at one point but too much family pressure (as I recollect, from both sides), about marriage for a 'cripple' (shades of Cousin Helen in the Katy books).

Sutcliff, like Renault, I suspect was strongly influenced by Naomi Mitchison's revisioning of the historical novel in the 20s and 30s, but pretty much losing her feminism and leftwing politics (which are, I may add, very well-integrated into her works). Mitchison wrote a lot of children's books, mainly historicals, but I think they're all out of print now. Mitchison was so much less about 'women couldn't do heroic stuff in those past days' and more about 'in what ways could women be heroic in those circumstances'.

[maeve66]

Now that you say that, I remember, about Sutcliff's rheumatoid fever. I wonder if there's a bio of her around? Apart from the autobiography, though I'd be very interested to read that, too. I enjoy biographies and autobiographies of writers... I have one of Mary Renault, which is fascinating... and Beverly Cleary, as well. Now I want to look up Mitchison, as she sounds amazing... out of print isn't impossible to find, necessarily. But expensive. Sigh. That Alberta Wilson Constant? She's out of print, too. It took me AGES to even come up with one of her titles to lead to her name, yesterday. But she's American.

[oursin]

I think what Sutcliff had was Still's Disease. I don't think I've come across any biographies of her - as far as I can see all there is is a critical monograph from the 1960s.

Mitchison is indeed amazing - there are 2 biographies, plus several volumes of her own memoirs.