The Changeling

by Rosemary Sutcliff

HARDCOVER

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Childrens

96 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1961

About the author

Rosemary Sutcliff, CBE (1920-1992) was a British novelist, best known as a writer of highly acclaimed historical fiction. Although primarily a children's author, the quality and depth of her writing also appeals to adults. She once commented that she wrote "for children of all ages, from nine to ninety."

Born in West Clandon, Surrey, Sutcliff spent her early youth in Malta and other naval bases where her father was stationed as a naval officer. She contracted Still's Disease when she was very young and was confined to a wheelchair for most of her life. Due to her chronic sickness, she spent the majority of her time with her mother, a tireless storyteller, from whom she learned many of the Celtic and Saxon legends that she would later expand into works of historical fiction. Her early schooling being continually interrupted by moving house and her disabling condition, Sutcliff didn't learn to read until she was nine, and left school at fourteen to enter the Bideford Art School, which she attended for three years, graduating from the General Art Course. She then worked as a painter of miniatures.

Rosemary Sutcliff began her career as a writer in 1950 with The Chronicles of Robin Hood. She found her voice when she wrote The Eagle of the Ninth in 1954. In 1959, she won the Carnegie Medal for The Lantern Bearers and was runner-up in 1972 with Tristan and Iseult. In 1974 she was highly commended for the Hans Christian Andersen Award. Her The Mark of the Horse Lord won the first Phoenix Award in 1985.

Sutcliff lived for many years in Walberton near Arundel, Sussex. In 1975 she was appointed OBE for services to Children's Literature and promoted to CBE in 1992. She wrote incessantly throughout her life, and was still writing on the morning of her death. She never married.

http://us.macmillan.com/author/rosema...

Reviews

[Tanya · Rating 4 out of 5]

Something flashed downstream. Not the blue flash of a kingfisher, but something stranger, more shining and yet more shadowy. And looking after it, Murna's sight was caught and dazzled by the low sunlight through the budding twig-tangle. And when the sun-dazzle let her go, and she looked round again, there in the hollow of the alder roots, instead of her own red-haired baby, lay a tiny creature with great dark eyes in a little wizened face. [p. 20]

I hadn't previously read this short work by Sutcliff, written for the Antelope imprint of books for primary-school children and illustrated by the splendid Victor Ambrus (whose obituary I read recently in British Archaeologist, realising only then that he was known for Time Team and visualisations of prehistory as well as for his illustrations). As far as I can tell, The Changeling has been out of print since first publication in 1974, and the libraries I frequented in my youth did not possess copies.

It's the tale of Tethra, who is adopted by Conan and Murna of the Epidii after being left in exchange for Murna's own son. The Old One of the tribe predicts doom, dark days, curses et cetera: but Tethra grows up as part of the tribe, until a bad year comes to pass and the Old One reiterates his dire predictions. Tethra walks away before they can exile him, or worse: finds the Little Dark People, and is reunited with his birth-mother; seeks her help when he sees Conan, his adoptive father, badly wounded while hunting; and finally returns, not without regret, to the Epidii. It's not a wholly cheerful book, even when you ignore -- or, like many younger readers, are oblivious to -- the implications of withcraft, child sacrifice and ritual murder. (Tethra, bringing medicine to Conan, tells the other Epidii that he knows they will kill him if Conan dies from that medicine.) But it is full of the beautiful details that Sutcliff did so well: the stockade that's taken root and become a blackthorn hedge, the shimmer of light on water, a necklace of green plover feathers ...

The Changeling came to my attention because there's a new ebook edition from SF Gateway. I cannot recommend that version, as (a) it's £4.99 for 32 pages of text (b) it omits Ambrus's illustrations (c) the blurb includes the line 'Raising a child of the Fae Folk will bring disaster upon the Epidii people.' I cannot stress enough that there are no Fae here, nor (as far as I can recall) in any of Sutcliff's work: just Picts and Celts.

Fulfils the 'middle-grade novel' rubric of the 52 in 2022 challenge.

[Doodles McC · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a young child I liked this very short children's story of Picts & Celts. It's the tale of Tethra, who is adopted by Conan and Murna of the Epidii.

[Laurie D'ghent · Rating 3 out of 5]

Made it 36 pages and gave up. Not a bad book--it's just not for me. The dialogue is almost incomprehensible.