Edward Rutherfurd | |
---|---|
Born | 1948 Salisbury, England |
Occupation | Writer |
Nationality | British |
Genre | Historical novels |
Notable works | Sarum |
Website | |
edwardrutherfurd |
Edward Rutherfurd is a pen name for Francis Edward Wintle [1] (born in 1948). He is best known as a writer of epic historical novels that span long periods of history but are set in particular places. His debut novel, Sarum , set the pattern for his work with a ten-thousand-year storyline.
Rutherfurd attended the University of Cambridge and Stanford Business School, where he earned a Sloan fellowship. [1] [2] After graduating he worked in political research, bookselling and publishing. [2] He abandoned his career in the book trade in 1983 and returned to his childhood home to write Sarum , a historical novel with a ten-thousand year story, set in the area around the ancient monument of Stonehenge and Salisbury. [3]
Sarum was published in 1987 and became an instant international best-seller, remaining for 23 weeks on the New York Times Bestseller List.[ citation needed ] Since then he produced seven more New York Times best-sellers: Russka , a novel of Russia; London ; The Forest , set in England's New Forest which lies close by Sarum; two novels, Dublin: Foundation (The Princes of Ireland) and Ireland: Awakening (The Rebels of Ireland), which cover the story of Ireland from the time just before Saint Patrick to the twentieth century; New York ; Paris; and China.
His books have sold more than fifteen million copies and been translated into twenty languages. [4] Rutherfurd settled near Dublin, Ireland in the early 1990s, but currently divides his time between Europe and North America. [2]
New York: The Novel, won the Langum Prize for American Historical Fiction in 2009 [5] and was awarded the Washington Irving Medal for Literary Excellence, by the Saint Nicholas Society of the City of New York, in 2011. [6]
In 2015 Edward Rutherfurd was the recipient of the City of Zaragoza's International Historical Novel Honor Award "for his body of work in the field of the historical novel." [7]
Rutherfurd invents four to six fictional families and tells the stories of their descendants. Using this framework, he chronicles the history of a place, often from the beginning of civilisation to modern times – a kind of historical fiction inspired by the work of James Michener. [8]
Rutherfurd's novels are generally at least 500 pages in length and sometimes more than 1,000. Divided into a number of parts, each chapter represents a different era in the place where the novel is set. There is usually an extensive family tree in the introduction, with each generational line matching the corresponding chapters. [9] [10]
George Augustus Moore was an Irish novelist, short-story writer, poet, art critic, memoirist and dramatist. Moore came from a Roman Catholic landed family who lived at Moore Hall in Carra, County Mayo. He originally wanted to be a painter, and studied art in Paris during the 1870s. There, he befriended many of the leading French artists and writers of the day.
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Sarum is a work of historical fiction by Edward Rutherfurd, first published in 1987. It is Rutherfurd's literary debut. It tells the story of England through the tales of several families in and around the English city of Salisbury, the writer's hometown, from prehistoric times to 1985.
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Dublin: Foundation (2004) is a novel by Edward Rutherfurd first published in 2004 by Century Hutchinson and then by Seal Books and Doubleday Canada.
London is a historical novel by Edward Rutherfurd published in 1997, which charts the history of London from 54 B.C. to 1997. The novel begins with the birth of the River Thames and moves to 54 B.C., detailing the life of Segovax, a curious character with slightly webbed hands and a flash of white hair. Segovax becomes the ancestor of the Ducket and Dogget families, prominent fictional families woven into the novel.
The Forest is a historical novel by Edward Rutherfurd, published in 2000. Drawing on the success of Rutherfurd's other epic novels this went on to sell well and appeared in numbers of bestseller lists.
Ireland: Awakening (2006) is a novel by Edward Rutherfurd first published in 2006 by Century Hutchinson. It concludes the two-part series known as The Dublin Saga.
New York: a Novel (2009) is an historical novel by British novelist Edward Rutherfurd. The United States edition is published by Doubleday under the title New York: The Novel.
The David J. Langum Sr. Prizes are American literary awards for historical fiction, biography and legal history. They have been awarded annually since 2001 by the Langum Charitable Trust.
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Paris is a historical novel by Edward Rutherfurd published in 2013, which charts the history of Paris from 1261 to 1968.
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