Chronological order of Rosemary Sutcliff's historical fiction

[hedgebird]

ETA 2014: See Chronology at Sutcliff Wiki for historical context and how I (or others) arrived at these dates. Corrections happen over there first.

As of mid-2012 I've read all but one short story of Rosemary Sutcliff's historical fiction, so far as I know actually there were three more stories I didn't know of, but I've read them all now and so can you at sutcliff_talk.

All of her fiction appears to take place in the same 'universe': her themes, voice, values, and view of historical events and people generally remain consistent across various stories, and though her invented characters generally don't cross-over from story to story (with the notable exceptions of the Capricorn Bracelet and We Lived in Drumfyvie collections), a few details of worldbuilding do hint at their creative unity.

• The marching-song "The Girl I Kissed at Clusium" (probably inspired by Rudyard Kipling's "Rimini") appears in The Eagle of the Ninth, A Circlet of Oak Leaves, and Eagle's Egg.
• The left-handed prehistoric ax shown to Randall in Knight's Fee is implied to have belonged to one-handed Drem of Warrior Scarlet.
• In Outcast Isca Dumnoniorum is said to have been burned by the Roman garrison a generation earlier in reprisal for a revolt; the uprising and punitive burning occur in the early chapters of The Eagle of the Ninth.
• The Dacian Cavalry, an auxiliary unit borrowed from Kipling which I think was an error for the I Aelia Dacorum infantry cohort, appears in The Eagle of the Ninth, The Silver Branch, A Circlet of Oak Leaves, "Swallows in the Spring", and The Capricorn Bracelet. The latter three feature their signature "fire ride".
• The Frontier Wolves turn up in The Mark of the Horse Lord, The Capricorn Bracelet, Frontier Wolf, and The Shining Company.
• Eight novels following the family line of Marcus Flavius Aquila are linked by the inheritance of an emerald signet ring showing a dolphin cresting a wave formed from a white flaw in the stone. (This ring also appears in tribute to Sutcliff in Megan Whalen Turner's The Thief.) The complete series in order of publication (see chronological order below): The Eagle of the Ninth (1954), The Shield Ring (1955), The Silver Branch (1957), The Lantern Bearers (1959), Dawn Wind (1961), Sword at Sunset (1963), Frontier Wolf (1980), Sword Song (1997).

Sutcliff's remarkably consistent world-building is no doubt aided by the fact that her novels rarely overlap. (Only Simon & The Rider of the White Horse, Brother Dusty-Feet & Lady in Waiting, and The Lantern Bearers & Sword at Sunset have shared dramatis personae; in the two former cases, real people with established biographies.) Where they do, inconsistencies creep in:

• The Epid(a)i(i) tribe of Caledonia appeared in four books written out of chronological order. In The Eagle of the Ninth (1954), set about 128 CE, they're the inhabitants of Argyll holding the Eagle; in The Mark of the Horse Lord (1965), set in the 180s, they've been subsumed by the Dalriadain for the last four generations. In The Changeling (1974), they're the Bronze Age Golden People who conquered the Little Dark People in time out of mind; in Sun Horse, Moon Horse (1977), they're an offshoot of the Iceni pushed northward by Roman expansion in about 100 BCE.
• The Lantern Bearers (1959) and its direct sequel Sword at Sunset (1963) do not appear to agree on the length of time that passes in The Lantern Bearers - something over twenty years in the text of TLB, but thirty cited in SAS. Other details, like Ambrosius's religion - Christianity in TLB, Mithraism in SAS - have also been revised to fit Sword at Sunset's story.

For the purposes of this timeline, I've given dates as Sutcliff apparently intended them - either given explicitly in fore- and afterwords, or by references in the text to events with absolute dates. However scrupulous she was about historical accuracy, though, later research and archaeology doesn't necessarily bear out her chronology. I'm hardly the person best qualified to point out historical inaccuracies, but a few that turned up when I first attempted this:

• Skara Brae was abandoned earlier than 2000 BCE (Shifting Sands)
• The Uffington White Horse was built earlier than 100 BCE (Sun Horse, Moon Horse)
• The Ninth Legion is no longer believed to have been lost in Britain (The Eagle of the Ninth; Swallows in the Spring)
• The Rhee Wall of Romney Marsh was not built by Romans, but in the middle ages (Outcast)
• The Antonine Wall wasn't manned in the 180s (The Mark of the Horse Lord)

I haven't included her ten or so retellings of the Trojan War, Irish epics, Maloryian Arthuriana, Beowulf, and Robin Hood, which retain their traditional ahistorical elements, and most of which I still haven't read. Let's assume they run on mythical time.

Format:

• Novel
• Real Person Fiction: closely or ostensibly based on historical figures, mostly adult novels
• Eagle of the Ninth series: loosely connected by the Flavius family signet ring
• ? : I'm guessing the date

Stone, Bronze, and Iron Age Britain

• c. 2000-1000 BCE - Shifting Sands
• 900 BCE - Warrior Scarlet
• Flowering Dagger
• The Chief's Daughter
• 100 BCE - Sun Horse, Moon Horse
• The Changeling

Classical Greece (late 5th century BCE, Peloponnesian War)

• 415-404 BCE - The Flowers of Adonis
• 412 BCE - The Truce of the Games / A Crown of Wild Olive

Roman Britain, 1st-4th centuries CE
  Indeterminate:

• ? - The Bridge Builders
• ? - The Fugitives

1st century

• c. 20s-61- Song for a Dark Queen
• 61 - "Death of a City" in The Capricorn Bracelet
• 80-83 - Eagle's Egg

2nd century

• 123 - "Rome Builds A Wall" in The Capricorn Bracelet
• 126-129 - The Eagle of the Ninth
• 130s - Swallows in the Spring
• 130s or 40s - Outcast
• 150 - "Outpost Fortress" in The Capricorn Bracelet
• 150s? - A Circlet of Oak Leaves
• 180s - The Mark of the Horse Lord
• 196 - "Traprain Law" in The Capricorn Bracelet

3rd century

• 280 - "Frontier Scout" in The Capricorn Bracelet
• 290s - The Silver Branch

4th century

• 340s - Frontier Wolf
• 383 - "The Eagles Fly South" in The Capricorn Bracelet

The Dark Ages

• c. 450-472 - The Lantern Bearers
• c. 480-520 - Sword at Sunset
• c. 585-597 - Dawn Wind
• c. 595-600 - The Shining Company
• c. 880s-90s - Sword Song
• c. 985-990 - Blood Feud

Norman

• 1090-1103 - The Shield Ring
• 1094-1106 - Knight's Fee
• 1116-1127 - The Witch's Brat
• 1137 - "Duncan the Red" in We Lived In Drumfyvie
• 1139 - "The Red Sheriff" in We Lived in Drumfyvie
• 1160 - "Midsummer Fair" in We Lived In Drumfyvie

Medieval

• 1314 - "The Man Who Liked a Peaceful Life" in WLID
• 1360 - "A Burgess Builds His Home" in WLID
• 1450 - "The Pest Comes to Drumfyvie" in WLID

16th century

• 1513 - "The Man-at-Arms" in WLID
• c. 1534-5 - The Armourer's House
• 1563 - "A House With Glass Windows" in WLID
• 15-? - The Queen Elizabeth Story
• c. 1583 - Brother Dusty-Feet
• 1589 - "Witch Hunt!" in WLID
• 1564-1618 - Lady in Waiting

17th century

• 1637-42 "We Sign the Covenant" in WLID
• 1642-1644 - The Rider of the White Horse / Rider on a White Horse
• 1640-1646 - Simon
• 1644-50 - "God Be with You" in WLID
• 1683-1695 - Bonnie Dundee

18th century

• 1740 - "Anderson Brothers" in WLID
• c. late 1740s - Flame-Coloured Taffeta
• 1785 - "Drumfyvie Elects a Provost" in WLID

19th century

• 1807-1815 - Blood and Sand
• 1897 - "The Jubilee Wing" in WLID