Susan Cooper

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For other people named Susan Cooper, see Susan Cooper (disambiguation).
Susan Cooper

Cooper in September 2013
Born (1935-05-23) 23 May 1935
Burnham, Buckinghamshire, England, UK
Occupation Writer
Language English
Period 1964–present
Genres Children's fantasy novels
Notable work(s) The Dark is Rising series
Notable award(s)

Newbery Medal
1976

Margaret Edwards Award
2012
Spouse(s)
thelostland.com

Susan Mary Cooper (born 23 May 1935) is an English-born American author of children's books. She is best known for The Dark Is Rising, a contemporary fantasy series set in England and Wales, which incorporates British mythology, such as the Arthurian legends, and Welsh folk heroes.[1] For that work, in 2012 she won the lifetime Margaret Edwards Award from the American Library Association recognizing her contribution to writing for teens.[2] In the 1970s two of the five novels were named the year's best English-language book with an "authentic Welsh background" by the Welsh Books Council.[3]

Biography

Born in 1935 in Burnham, Buckinghamshire to John Richard Cooper and Ethel May Field.[4] Her father had worked in the reading room of the Natural History Museum until going off to fight in World War I, from which he returned with a wounded leg. He then pursued a career in the offices of the Great Western Railway; her mother was a teacher of ten-year-olds and eventually became deputy head of a large junior high school. Like Cooper, her younger brother Roderick also grew up to become a writer.[4]

Susan Cooper lived in Buckinghamshire, just northwest of London, until she was 21, when her parents moved to her grandmother's village of Aberdovey, Wales. She attended Slough High School and then earned a degree in English from the University of Oxford where she was the first woman to edit the undergraduate newspaper Cherwell.[5]

After University graduation, she worked as a reporter for The Sunday Times of London under Ian Fleming, and wrote in her spare time. During that period she began work on the Dark Is Rising series and finished her debut novel, the science fiction Mandrake, published by Hodder & Stoughton in 1964.[6]

Cooper emigrated to the United States in 1963 to marry Nicholas J. Grant, Professor of Metallurgy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a widower with three teenage children.[7] She had two children with him, Jonathan Roderick Howard Grant (b. 1965) and Katharine Mary Grant (b. 1966; later Katharine Glennon). She then became a full-time writer, focusing on the Dark Is Rising series and on Dawn of Fear (1970), a novel based on her childhood wartime experiences. Eventually she would write fiction for both children and adults, a series of picture books, film screenplays, and works for the stage.

Around the time of writing Seaward (1983), both of her parents died and her marriage to Grant dissolved.[4]

In July 1996, she married the Canadian-American actor and her sometime co-author Hume Cronyn, the widower of Jessica Tandy. (Cronyn and Tandy had starred in the 1982 Broadway production of Foxfire, written by Cooper and Cronyn.)[8] Cooper and Cronyn remained married until his death in June 2003.

Hollywood adapted The Dark is Rising, the 1973 novel, as a film in 2007, The Seeker.[9] It disappointed Cooper; she requested that some changes from her narrative be reverted, to no avail.[10]

Cooper is on the Board of the National Children's Book and Literacy Alliance (NCBLA), a U.S. nonprofit organization that advocates for literacy, literature, and libraries.

She lives in Marshfield, Massachusetts as of October 2012.[11]

Awards

For her lifetime contribution as a children's writer, Cooper was U.S. nominee in 2002 for the biennial, international Hans Christian Andersen Award, the highest international recognition available to creators of children's books.[12][13]

The ALA Margaret A. Edwards Award recognizes one writer and a particular body of work for "significant and lasting contribution to young adult literature". Cooper won the award in 2012 citing the five Dark is Rising novels, published 1965 to 1977. The citation observed, "In one of the most influential epic high fantasies in literature, Cooper evokes Celtic and Arthurian mythology and masterly world-building in a high-stakes battle between good and evil, embodied in the coming of age journey of Will Stanton."[2]

She has also been recognized for single books:

Joel Chaston wrote, "Cooper's novels, particularly the Dark is Rising books, are as popular as when they were first published. The series is available in boxed sets, still in print both in paperback and hardback editions in the United States. Cooper's more recent literary works, as well as her television movies, have continued to broaden her audience and help secure her reputation as one of the most versatile, popular, and critically acclaimed children's writers of the twentieth century."[4] Mary Corran has written, "Cooper's books are intensely satisfying for readers of all ages. She succeeds in producing the most desirable aspect of books for children—the subversive element where children are more aware of the subtext than adults—while discussing issues of extreme complexity. Would that there were more of them."[16]

Works

Biography

  • J. B. Priestley: portrait of an author (London: Heinemann, 1970) — biography of the English writer and socialist John Boynton Priestley[17]
  • The Magic Maker: a portrait of John Langstaff and his Christmas Revels (Candlewick Press, 2011) — juvenile biography of John Langstaff, founder of the Revels[18]

Other nonfiction

  • Behind the Golden Curtain: a view of the USA (Hodder & Stoughton and Scribner's, 1965)[15]
  • Dreams and Wishes: Essays on Writing for Children (Simon & Schuster, 1996)[15]

Drama

  • Foxfire, Cooper and Hume Cronyn (Samuel French Inc, 1982), stage playbook[15] — produced on Broadway as Foxfire (1982)[8] — based on the Foxfire books

Cooper wrote four screenplays produced for television, one supernatural tale for children and three more adaptations of books about Appalachia (as Foxfire).[15]

  • Dark Encounter (Shadows, Series 2; Thames Television, mid-1970s)
  • The Dollmaker (ABC, 1984)
  • To Dance with the White Dog (Hallmark, 1993)
  • Jewel (CBS, 2001)

Novels

The Dark Is Rising
Other
  • Mandrake (Hodder & Stoughton, 1964), science fiction for adults[15]
  • Dawn of Fear (1970), autobiographical World War II story[15]
  • Seaward (1983)
  • The Boggart (1993)
  • The Boggart and the Monster (1997)
  • King of Shadows (1999)
  • Green Boy (2002)
  • Victory (June 2006)‡
  • Ghost Hawk (2013)

Children's picture books

  • Jethro and the Jumbie (1979)
  • The Silver Cow: a Welsh tale (1983), retold
  • The Selkie Girl (1986), the Selkie legend retold
  • Matthew's Dragon (1991)
  • Tam Lin (1991), retold
  • Danny and the Kings (1993)
  • Frog (2002)
  • The Magician's Boy (2005), adapting her short play for the 1988 Revels[15]

‡ As of September 2013, her latest new work is Ghost Hawk, featuring the spirit of a Wampanoag, people decimated by European disease, who witnesses the transformation of Massachusetts by the Plymouth Colony.[19]

Short fiction

  • "Muffin", Amy Ehrlich, ed., When I Was Your Age: Original Stories about Growing Up (Volume 1) (Candlewick) — story set in World War II England (as Dawn of Fear)
  • "Ghost Story", Don't Read This! (US, Front Street), Fingers on the Back of the Neck (UK, Puffin) — collection supporting IBBY
  • Our White House: Looking In, Looking Out (Candlewick) — Cooper wrote one piece of this mixed-genre NCBLA collaboration
  • The Exquisite Corpse Adventure (Candlewick) — Cooper wrote one episode of this sequential story collaboration of children's authors and illustrators by NCBLA for the LC website
  • "The Caretakers", Haunted (Anderson Press collection, UK only)

See also

References

  1. ↑ Elizabeth Hand. "Susan Cooper". Richard Bleiler, ed. Supernatural Fiction Writers: Contemporary Fantasy and Horror. New York: Thomson/Gale, 2003. Pp. 239–44. ISBN 0-684-31250-6.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 "Edwards Award 2012". Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA). American Library Association (ALA).
      "Edwards Award". YALSA. ALA. Retrieved 2013-10-11.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 "Tir na n-Og Awards". Welsh Books Council (WBC).
    "Tir na n-Og awards Past Winners". WBC. Retrieved 2013-03-14.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 Chaston, Joel D. (1996). "Susan (Mary) Cooper". In Caroline C. Hunt. Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 161: British Children's Writers Since 1960: First Series. Detroit: Gale. 
  5. ↑ Charles Butler, Four British Fantasists: Place And Culture in the Children's Fantasies of Penelope Lively, Alan Garner, Diana Wynne Jones, and Susan Cooper (Rowman & Littlefield, 2006), page 14.
  6. ↑ Susan Cooper at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database. Retrieved 2012-03-05. Select a title to see its linked publication history and general information. Select a particular edition (title) for more data at that level, such as a front cover image or linked contents.
  7. ↑ Chaston, Joel D. (1996). "Susan (Mary) Cooper". In Caroline C. Hunt. Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 161: British Children's Writers Since 1960: First Series. Detroit: Gale. Retrieved August 5, 2013. 
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 Foxfire at the Internet Broadway Database. Retrieved 2012-03-15.
  9. ↑ The Seeker at the Internet Movie Database Retrieved 2012-03-25.
  10. ↑ "Author Uncertain About 'Dark' Leap to Big Screen". Margot Adler. National Public Radio. 2007. Retrieved 2012-03-15.
  11. ↑ One repeated source of biographical data is Susan Cooper, Dreams and Wishes: Essays on Writing for Children, Margaret K. McElderry (date?). ISBN 0-689-80736-8.
  12. ↑ "Hans Christian Andersen Awards". International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY). Retrieved 2013-07-22.
  13. ↑ "Candidates for the Hans Christian Andersen Awards 1956–2002". The Hans Christian Andersen Awards, 1956–2002. IBBY. Gyldendal. 2002. Pages 110–18. Hosted by Austrian Literature Online (literature.at). Retrieved 2013-07-22.
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 "Newbery Medal and Honor Books, 1922–Present". Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC). ALA. Retrieved 2012-03-15.
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 15.2 15.3 15.4 15.5 15.6 15.7 . The Lost Land of Susan Cooper. Susan Cooper. Retrieved 2013-03-14.
  16. ↑ Corran, Mary (1996). "Susan Cooper: Overview". In David Pringle. St. James Guide to Fantasy Writers. New York: St. James Press. Retrieved August 5, 2013. 
  17. ↑ "J. B. Priestley: portrait of an author". Library of Congress Catalog Record (LCC). Retrieved 2013-02-12.
  18. ↑ According to the publisher description, Cooper is "a friend and writer for the Revels".
    "The magic maker: a portrait of John Langstaff, creator of the Christmas ...". LCC record. Retrieved 2013-02-12.
  19. ↑ Ghost Hawk. LCC record. Retrieved 2013-02-12.

Further reading

  • Four British Fantasists: Place and Culture in the Children's Fantasies of Penelope Lively, Alan Garner, Diana Wynne Jones, and Susan Cooper, Charles Butler (Rowman & Littlefield, 2006)
  • The Wand in the Word: Conversations with Writers of Fantasy, Leonard Marcus (Candlewick, 2006)

External links

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