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The Capricorn Bracelet
CapricornBracelet
First UK edition cover

Publication

1973

Format

Short story collection

Audience

Children

Historical era

Roman, 1st-4th centuries CE

Illustrations

Charles Keeping (UK), Richard Cuffari (US)

The Capricorn Bracelet is a collection of six stories published in 1973 by Oxford University Press, with illustrations by Charles Keeping. Rosemary Sutcliff originally wrote the stories as scripts for the radio programme Stories from Scottish History, then adapted them for the collection.

The book is dedicated, "For Margaret Lyford Pike who produced the scripts and coped with all the crises. With my love."

Contents[]

  1. "Death of a City" – AD 61
  2. "Rome Builds a Wall" – AD 123
  3. "Outpost Fortress" – AD 150
  4. "Traprain Law" – AD 196
  5. "Frontier Scout" – AD 280
  6. "The Eagles Fly South" – AD 383

Plot[]

The six stories are narrated in the first person and feature descendants of one Romano-British family, each usually named Lucius Calpurnius, who inherit an Roman army "good conduct" bracelet with the capricorn badge of the Second Legion. (Sutcliff used a similar device in the novels linked by a dolphin signet ring.) The stories span the Roman colonization of Britain from the Boudiccan revolt to the wars of Maximus. Each story is headed by a date and followed by a brief historical outline.

Background[]

The Author's Note explains,

"The stories in this book began as scripts about Roman Scotland, which I wrote for Radio Scotland to produce as part of a series called "Stories from Scottish History." I loved writing them, but I got very cramped and frustrated by all the things I wanted to put in but had to leave out because there wasn't room for them in a twenty-minute script. So I decided, when the B.B.C. had finished with them, to write them again, as a book, in which I could have all the space I wanted for what I had had to leave out before."

Stories from Scottish History was a 20-minute programme broadcast by BBC Schools Radio from 1947 to 1972. The total number of scripts written by Sutcliff, their titles and broadcast dates, are unknown. Her Stories from Scottish History script entitled "The New Laird," held by the University of Southern Mississippi, was broadcast in May 1966.[1] Sutcliff continued to write scripts for Scottish radio in 1968 and 1969.[2]

Publication history[]

In English:

  1. London : Oxford University Press, 1973. Illus. Charles Keeping.[3]
  2. New York : H.Z. Walck, 1973. Illus. Richard Cuffari.[4]
  3. London : Oxford University Press, 1976. Illus. Charles Keeping.[5]
  4. London : Red Fox, 1990. Illus. Charles Keeping.[6]
  5. London : Red Fox, 2003. Illus. Charles Keeping.[7]
  6. London : Red Fox Classics, 2013.[8]
  7. London : RHCP Digital, 2013.[9]

In translation:

  1. Yagiza no buresuretto: Buritania no rushiusu no monogatari. Japanese by Shiro Yamamoto. 原書房,[10]

References[]

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