Crossley-Holland, Kevin

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Kevin Crossley-Holland

Personal

Born February 7, 1941, in Mursley, Buckingham-shire, England; son of Peter Charles (a professor) and Joan Mary (Cowper) Crossley-Holland; married Caroline Fendall Thompson, 1963 (marriage ended); married Ruth Marris, 1972 (marriage ended); married Gillian Cook, 1982; children: (first marriage) Kieran, Dominic; (third marriage) Oenone, Eleanor. Education: St. Edmund Hall, Oxford, B.A. (with honors), 1962. Hobbies and other interests: Music, archaeology, travel, architecture.

Addresses

Office— Clare Cottage, Burnham Market, Norfolk PE31 8HE, England. Agent— Rogers, Coleridge & White, 20 Powis Mews, London W11 1JN, England.

Career

Writer and translator. Macmillan & Co. (publisher), London, England, editor, 1962-69; Victor Gollancz Ltd. (publisher), London, editorial director, 1972-77; Boydell & Brewer (publisher), Woodbridge, Suffolk, England, editorial consultant, 1983-91. Tufts-in-London Program, lecturer in English, 1967-78; University of Leeds, Gregory Fellow in poetry, 1969-71; University of Regensburg, English lecturer, 1978-80; Winchester School of Art, Arts Council Fellow in writing, 1983-84; St. Olaf College, Northfield, MN, visiting professor of English and Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence, 1987-88; St. Thomas College, MN, professor and endowed chair of humanities, 1991-95; visiting lecturer for British Council in Germany, Iceland, India, and Yugoslavia. BBC, London, talks producer, 1972; contributor to radio, television and musical works.

Member

Eastern Arts Association (chair, literature panel, 1986-89), Friends, Wingfield College (trustee and chair, 1989—), Royal Society of Literature (fellow).

Awards, Honors

Arts Council awards for best book for children, 1968, for The Green Children, 1977, and 1978; poetry award, 1972, for The Rain-Giver; Poetry Book Society Choice, 1976, for The Dream-House; Francis Williams Award, 1977, for The Wildman; Carnegie Medal, 1985, for Storm; Whitbread Award, 2000, GuardianChildren's Fiction Prize, 2001, and Welsh Books Council's Ti na n-Og Award for Best English Language Book, 2001, all for Arthur: The Seeing Stone.

Writings

FOR YOUNG ADULTS

(Reteller) Havelok the Dane, illustrated by Brian Wildsmith, Macmillan (London, England), 1964, Dutton (New York, NY), 1965.

(Reteller) King Horn, illustrated by Charles Keeping, Macmillan (London, England), 1965, Dutton (New York, NY), 1966.

(Reteller) The Green Children (also see below), illustrated by Margaret Gordon, Macmillan (London, England), 1966, Seabury Press (New York, NY), 1968, illustrated by Alan Marks, Oxford University Press (London, England), 1994.

(Editor) Winter's Tales for Children: No. 3, Macmillan (London, England), 1967, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1968.

(Reteller) The Callow Pit Coffer, illustrated by Margaret Gordon, Macmillan (London, England), 1968, Seabury Press (New York, NY), 1969.

(Reteller, with Jill Paton Walsh) Wordhoard: Anglo-Saxon Stories, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1969.

(Translator) Storm and Other Old English Riddles (verse), illustrated by Miles Thistlethwaite, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1970.

(Reteller) The Pedlar of Swaffham, illustrated by Margaret Gordon, Macmillan (London, England), 1971, Seabury Press (New York, NY), 1972.

(Reteller) The Sea-Stranger, illustrated by Joanna Troughton, Heinemann (London, England), 1973, Seabury Press (New York, NY), 1974.

(Reteller) The Fire-Brother, illustrated by Joanna Troughton, Seabury Press (New York, NY), 1975.

(Reteller) Green Blades Rising: The Anglo-Saxons, Deutsch (London, England), 1975, Seabury Press (New York, NY), 1976.

(Reteller) The Earth-Father, illustrated by Joanna Troughton, Heinemann (London, England), 1976.

The Wildman (also see below), illustrated by Charles Keeping, Deutsch (London, England), 1976.

(Editor) The Faber Book of Northern Legends, illustrated by Alan Howard, Faber (London, England), 1977.

(Editor) The Faber Book of Northern Folk-Tales, illustrated by Alan Howard, Faber (London, England), 1980.

(Editor) The Riddle Book, illustrated by Bernard Handelsman, Macmillan (London, England), 1982.

(Reteller) The Dead Moon and Other Tales from East Anglia and the Fen Country, illustrated by Shirley Felts, Deutsch (London, England), 1982.

(Reteller) Beowulf, illustrated by Charles Keeping, Oxford University Press (London, England), 1982.

(Reteller, with Gwyn Thomas) Tales from the Mabinogion, illustrated by Margaret Jones, Gollancz (London, England), 1984, Overlook Press (New York, NY), 1985.

Storm, illustrated by Alan Marks, Heinemann (London, England), 1985, Barron's (Hauppage, NY), 1989.

(Reteller) Axe-Age, Wolf-Age: A Selection from the Norse Myths, illustrated by Hannah Firmin, Deutsch (London, England), 1985.

(Reteller) The Fox and the Cat: Animal Tales from Grimm, illustrated by Susan Varley, Andersen Press (London, England), 1985, Lothrop (New York, NY), 1986.

(Reteller) Northern Lights: Legends, Sagas, and Folk-Tales, illustrated by Alan Howard, Faber (London, England), 1987.

(Reteller) British Folk Tales: New Versions, Orchard (New York, NY), 1987, published in four volumes as Boo!, Dathera Dad, Piper and Pooka, and Small-Tooth Dog, illustrated by Peter Melnyczuk, Orchard (London, England), 1988.

(Reteller, with Gwyn Thomas) The Quest for Olwen, illustrated by Margaret Jones, Lutterworth Press (Cambridge, England), 1988.

(Reteller) Wulf, Faber (London, England), 1988.

(Reteller) Under the Sun and over the Moon (poetry), illustrated by Ian Penney, Putnam (New York, NY), 1989.

(Reteller) Sleeping Nanna, illustrated by Peter Melnyczuk, Orchard (London, England), 1989, Ideals (New York, NY), 1990.

(Reteller) Sea Tongue, illustrated by Clare Challice, BBC/Longman (London, England), 1991.

(Reteller) Tales from Europe, BBC (London, England), 1991.

(Reteller, with Gwyn Thomas) The Tale of Taliesin, illustrated by Margaret Jones, Gollancz (London, England), 1992.

(Reteller) Long Tom and the Dead Hand, illustrated by Shirley Felts, Deutsch (London, England), 1992.

(Reteller) The Labours of Herakles, illustrated by Peter Utton, Orion (London, England), 1993.

(Reteller) The Old Stories: Folk Tales from East Anglia and the Fen Country, illustrated by John Lawrence, Colt (Cambridge, England), 1997.

(Reteller) Short! A Book of Very Short Stories, Oxford University Press (London, England), 1998.

(Reteller) The King Who Was and Will Be: The World of King Arthur and His Knights, illustrated by Peter Malone, Orion (London, England), 1998, published as The World of King Arthur and His Court: People, Places, Legend, and Lore, Dutton (New York, NY), 1999.

(Editor) Young Oxford Book of Folk Tales, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1998.

(Reteller) Enchantment: Fairy Tales, Ghost Stories, and Tales of Wonder, illustrated by Emma Chichester Clark, Allen & Unwin (London, England), 2000.

Arthur: The Seeing Stone (first volume of trilogy), Allen & Unwin (London, England), 2000, Arthur A. Levine (New York, NY), 2001.

(Reteller) Hans Christian Andersen, The Ugly Duckling, illustrated by Meilo So, Knopf (New York, NY), 2001.

Arthur: At the Crossing Places (second volume of trilogy), Orion (London, England), 2001, Arthur A. Levine (New York, NY), 2002.

King of the Middle March (third volume of trilogy), Arthur A. Levine (New York, NY), 2004.

How Many Miles to Bethlehem?, Arthur A. Levine (New York, NY), 2004.

POETRY ; FOR ADULTS

On Approval, Outposts (London, England), 1961.

My Son, Turret (London, England), 1966.

Alderney: The Nunnery, Turret (London, England), 1968.

Confessional, Sceptre Press (Frensham, Surrey, England), 1969.

Norfolk Poems, Academy (London, England), 1970.

A Dream of a Meeting, Sceptre Press (Frensham, Surrey, England), 1970.

More than I Am, Steam Press (London, England), 1971.

The Wake, Keepsake Press (Richmond, Surrey, England), 1972.

The Rain-Giver, Deutsch (London, England), 1972.

Petal and Stone, Sceptre Press (Knotting, Bedfordshire, England), 1975.

The Dream-House, Deutsch (London, England), 1976.

Between My Father and My Son, Black Willow Press (Minneapolis, MN), 1982.

Time's Oriel, Hutchinson (London, England), 1983.

Waterslain and Other Poems, Hutchinson (London, England), 1986.

The Painting-Room and Other Poems, Hutchinson (London, England), 1988.

East Anglian Poems, Jardine (Colchester, England), 1988.

Oenone in January, Old Stile Press (Llandogo, Wales), 1988.

New and Selected Poems: 1965-1990, Hutchinson (London, England), 1990.

Eleanor's Advent, Old Stile Press (Llandogo, Wales), 1992.

The Language of Yes, Enitharmon (London, England), 1996.

Poems from East Anglia, Enitharmon (London, England), 1997.

Selected Poems, Enitharmon (London, England), 2001.

EDITOR ; FOR ADULTS

Running to Paradise: An Introductory Selection of the Poems of W. B. Yeats, Macmillan (London, England), 1967, Macmillan (New York, NY), 1968.

Winter's Tales 14, Macmillan (London, England), 1968.

(With Patricia Beer) New Poetry 2, Arts Council of Great Britain (London, England), 1976.

The Norse Myths: A Retelling, Pantheon (New York, NY), 1980.

(And translator) The Anglo-Saxon World: An Anthology, Boydell Press (Woodbridge, Suffolk), 1982, Barnes & Noble (New York, NY), 1983, reprinted, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1999.

Folk Tales of the British Isles, Folio Society (London, England), 1985, Pantheon (New York, NY), 1988.

The Oxford Book of Travel Verse, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1986.

Medieval Lovers: A Book of Days, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (New York, NY), 1988.

Medieval Gardens: A Book of Days, Rizzoli (New York, NY), 1990.

(Editor, with Lawrence Sail) The New Exeter Book of Riddles, illustrated by Simon Drew, Enitharmon (London, England), 1999.

General editor, "Mirror of Britain" series, Deutsch (London, England), 1975-80.

TRANSLATOR ; FOR ADULTS

The Battle of Maldon and Other Old English Poems, edited by Bruce Mitchell, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1965.

Beowulf, Farrar Straus (New York, NY), 1968, published with The Fight at Finnsburh, edited by Heather O'Donoghue, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1999.

The Exeter Riddle Book, Folio Society (London, England), 1978, revised as The Exeter Book of Riddles, Penguin (London, England), 1979, revised edition, Penguin (New York, NY) 1993.

The Wanderer, Jardine (Colchester, England), 1986.

The Old English Elegies, Folio Society (London, England), 1988.

OTHER

Pieces of Land: Journeys to Eight Islands, Gollancz (London, England), 1972.

The Stones Remain: Megalithic Sites of Britain, photographs by Andrew Rafferty, Rider (London, England), 1989.

(Author of libretto) The Green Children (two-act opera; based on his work of the same title), music by Nicola LeFanu, Novello (London, England), 1990.

(Author of libretto) The Wildman (opera; based on his work of the same title), Boydell & Brewer (Woodbridge, England), 1995.

Different—but Oh How Like! (booklet), Daylight Press (London, England), 1998.

Crossley-Holland's poetry notebooks are housed in the Brotherton Collection, University of Leeds; manuscripts for children's books are housed at the Lillian H. Smith and Osborne Collections, Toronto Public Library, Toronto, Canada; the Kerlan Collection, Minneapolis, houses material relating to Under the Sun and over the Moon.

Adaptations

Crossley-Holland's Exeter Book of Riddles was adapted as the musical work Riddles: For Six Solo Voices, SATB Chorus, Bells, and Piano by William Mathias, 1991.

Sidelights

British poet and translator Kevin Crossley-Holland has introduced many readers to the myths, legends, and folktales of the Anglo-Saxon tradition—particularly from his native East Anglia, England—through his lucid translations and retellings. The characters and messages in these retellings are timeless, and their stories convey subtle truths about life that are as pertinent today as they were when these tales were originally told. Crossley-Holland has been repeatedly praised by critics and readers alike for his ability to bring these ancient stories sharply into the present, while preserving their mystery, richness, and texture. "All of Crossley-Holland's best work combines his storytelling skills with his mastery of the poetic elements of language," noted a St. James Guide to Young Adult Writers essayist. Citing The Dead Moon and Other Tales from East Anglia and the Fen Country and Beowulf as among the author's finest works, the essayist concluded that, "Combining these skills creates and maintains an appropriate tone for each story."

A Musical, Not Literary, Background

Born in Buckinghamshire, England, in 1941, Crossley-Holland's youth was spent learning viola. He was born into a very musical family and had little recollection of reading books, claiming to have read less than fifteen books throughout his youth. Donna R. White in the Dictionary of Literary Biography explained: "His father, Peter Crossley-Holland, was a noted ethnomusicologist, and his mother, Joan Mary Cowper, received royal recognition for her services to the arts. The overriding theme of Crossley-Holland's childhood was music: international folksongs performed by his father (or on the gramophone), concerts, visiting musicians, and his own lamented viola lessons. This early musical training underscores Crossley-Holland's poetry and certain passages in his fiction." Crossley-Holland's main interests were similar to other boys his age: cricket, tennis, and the outdoors. It was when he studied English literature at Oxford University that he was first bitten by the writing bug, when he learned about the history of Britain. The Anglo-Saxons, an ancient people who lived on the island of Britain before the Norman Conquest, fascinated him, and he immersed himself in a study of their history, language, and literature. He also discovered poetry, and a love of words, and published his first book of poetry, On Approval, in 1961, at the age of twenty. A year later he finished up his degree at Oxford and graduated with honors.

On the strength of his academics and his first book, which was well received, Crossley-Holland got a job at the London publishing firm of Macmillan, where he worked for almost a decade as an editor. Surrounded by writers and editors and books, he was able to sustain what became a successful writing career as well, publishing his first book for children, a retelling of a medieval romance titled Have-lock the Dane, in 1964.

The Medieval World

Havelock the Dane was followed by several books about the Anglo-Saxon world Crossley-Holland had fallen in love with. Wordhoard Anglo-Saxon Stories, written with Jill Paton Walsh, paints a vivid picture of that ancient culture through the authors' translations of Old English poems and history. Tales fromthe Mabinogion, The Quest for Olwen, and The Tale of Taliesin, which he wrote with Gwyn Thomas, are simple, lyrical retellings of Welsh legends. The Dead Moon focuses on more ghostly tales, "peopled" by boggarts, will-o'-the-wykes, witches, dead hands, and green children, within which the author weaves a hint of East Anglian dialect. Several of the stories included in such anthologies as The Dead Moon and British Folk Tales: New Versions were later published as picture books. One of his notable retellings from the latter collection, Small-Tooth Dog, recounts the story of a curious dog who saves the life of a man only to demand the man's only daughter as payment.

A major focus of Crossley-Holland's young adult work has been the folktales of his native East Anglia, England. The Green Children, one of his most acclaimed works, contains retellings of several medieval tales. As a testament to Crossley-Holland's ability to bring these age-old stories to life, Charles Causley commented in Twentieth-Century Children's Writers that in The Green Children: "Mind and imagination are continuously stimulated and fed as the tales are resolved."

The tales surrounding King Arthur figure prominently in Crossley-Holland's work, both in his translations from the Anglo-Saxon and in his original novels for young readers. 1998's The King Who Was and Will Be: The World of King Arthur and His Court, published in the United States as The World of King Arthur and His Court: People, Places, Legend, and Lore, contains not only stories of Arthur, Lancelot, Merlin, and Guinevere, but also what Carolyn Phelan described in Booklist as "a veritable collage of materials related to King Arthur." Containing a wealth of facts, quotes from Chaucer and other old texts, maps of Briton, and discussions of heraldry, jousting, castle life, art, and other aspects of everyday life during the time of Camelot, the beautifully illustrated volume "will delight young readers with a taste for history," according to a reviewer for Publishers Weekly. "If ever a book could ignite a passion for Camelot," the reviewer concluded of The World of King Arthur and His Court, "this is it."

The "Arthur" Trilogy

The golden age of Camelot is also the focus of Arthur: The Seeing Stone, the second of Crossley-Holland's original novels and the first of a trilogy focusing on the life of that ancient king by linking it with that of twelve-year-old Arthur de Caldicot, who lived in the twelfth century. The two stories—that of the ancient king and the coming of age of the young man—reflect each other, beginning with Arthur de Caldicot's gift of a mysterious piece of black obsidian by an old friend of his father, named, coincidentally, Merlin. "At the very heart of Arthurian legend lies a magnetic dream," Crossley-Holland explained in an interview published on the Allen and Unwin Web Site: "That there was a time when people formed a society more perfect than ours, a Golden Age … and by reading about it, reaching out to it and its ideals, each of us too will be [sprinkled] with a little gold dust, and will rededicate our own lives." "The continuing resonance of Arthurian legend, the inspired dual plot, an elegantly lucid narrative style plus a gift for lively dialogue—all add up to a compelling story," according to Joanna Rudge Long in the Horn Book Magazine. The "Arthur" trilogy covers the years 1199 to 1203, and ends when Arthur de Caldicot is eighteen; The Seeing Stone won Great Britain's coveted Whitbread Award in 2000.

The second novel in the Arthur trilogy, At the Crossing Places, appeared in 2001. In this story, Arthur leaves home to train as a squire so he can participate in a crusade. During his own preparations for the journey, he turns to the stories of King Arthur and his knights preparing for battle for inspiration. Arthur also seeks to learn the true identities of his parents. A critic for Kirkus Reviews concluded that Crossley-Holland's novel was a "grand epic tale." Long believed that this second volume was part of an "absorbing and carefully wrought trilogy." In the third volume, King of the Middle March, Arthur is witness to the horrors of the Fourth Crusade, and the breaking up of King Arthur's court.

In addition to collecting British folk tales, Crossley-Holland has also spent time searching out and documenting the age-old stories of Iceland for the collection Northern Lights: Legends, Sagas, and Folk-Tales and Axe-Age, Wolf-Age. These stories draw from the rich, often violent Icelandic sagas that are among the oldest tales in the world. The Labours of Herakles recounts, in picture-book format, the twelve labors performed by the Greek hero for the king of Argos. And Hans Christian Andersen's The Ugly Duckling also benefits from Crossley-Holland's treatment, its text praised as more abridged and "sprightlier than the original" by Booklist contributor Ilene Cooper. A Publishers Weekly contributor noted that, "the familiar sequence of events unfolds in a courtly retelling shot through with flashes of humor," in prose "as elegant as it is lyrical."

A writer and translator who is discriminating in his use of language, Crossley-Holland works methodically on his manuscripts, putting them through numerous revisions before publication. His early exposure to the rhythms of music also figures strongly; when writing about the sea, he insists on getting the cadence of the waves into his prose. In his translations, Crossley-Holland tries to be as faithful as possible to the original work, although he is not afraid of taking an innovative approach to an ancient tale. "From time to time I've stepped into a tale and told it, as it were, from the inside out … by allowing [the protagonist] to tell his or her own story," he related in Magpies. "Recently, I've been thinking further about the use of monologue, and the possibilities of giving inanimate objects the power of speech."

If you enjoy the works of Kevin Crossley-Holland

you might want to check out the following books:

Frederick Rebsamen, Beowulf, 1992.

T. H. White, The Once and Future King, 1958.

Jane Yolen, Sword of the Rightful King, 2003.

The real power of Crossley-Holland's folk tales have been their ability to take an ancient story and make it appeal to a modern audience. He enjoys bringing to his books some of the things he loves—the sea, Anglo-Saxons, and East Anglia. Asked to describe the basis of his work, he once commented that it was lodged in "roots, the sense of past embodied in present, [and] the relationship of person to place." In a professional life that has incorporated a varied career as a university professor, poet, translator, radio and television commentator, editor, and children's book author, Crossley-Holland has resurrected the drama, language, and culture of an ancient world and made it resonate with meaning for readers young and old, in England and abroad.

Biographical and Critical Sources

BOOKS

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Gale (Detroit, MI), Volume 40: Poets of Great Britain and Ireland since 1940, 1985, Volume 161: British Children's Writers since 1960, First Series, 1996.

St. James Guide to Young Adult Writers, 2nd edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1999.

Twentieth-Century Children's Writers, 3rd edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1989.

PERIODICALS

Booklist, May 15, 1999, GraceAnne A. DeCandido, review of The Young Oxford Book of Folk Tales, p. 1694; November 15, 1999, Carolyn Phelan, review of The World of King Arthur and His Court, p. 617; July, 2001, Ilene Cooper, review of The Ugly Duckling, p. 2012; October 1, 2001, Carolyn Phelan, review of The Seeing Stone, p. 315; April 15, 2002, Stephanie Zvrin, interview with Kevin Crossley-Holland, p. 1414; November 1, 2002, Carolyn Phelan, review of At the Crossing Places, p. 494; February 15, 2003, Pat Austin, review of At the Crossing Places audiobook, p. 1094.

Folklore, April, 2000, Ruth Glass, review of Different—but Oh How Like!, p. 146.

Horn Book Magazine, November-December, 2001, Joanna Rudge Long, review of The Seeing Stone, p. 743; November-December, 2002, Joanna Rudge Long, review of At the Crossing Places, p. 752.

Kirkus Reviews, October 1, 2001, review of The Seeing Stone, p. 1421; September 1, 2002, review of At the Crossing Places, p. 1307.

Kliatt, November, 2002, Claire Rosser, review of At the Crossing Places, p. 6; May, 2003, Nola Theiss, review of At the Crossing Places (audiobook), p. 43.

Listener, November 14, 1968.

Magpies, July, 1991, Kevin Crossley-Holland, "The Flying Word, the Word of Life: Approaches to Norse Myth and British Folktale, Pt. II."

New Leader, May 4, 1987, Phoebe Pettingell, review of The Oxford Book of Travel Verse, p. 9.

Observer Review, February 26, 1970.

Publishers Weekly, October 18, 1999, review of The World of King Arthur and His Court, p. 85; July 16, 2001, review of The Ugly Duckling, p. 180.

Punch, October 23, 1968.

Saturday Review, March 15, 1969.

School Library Journal, April, 1991, Ruth K. Mac-Donald, review of Sleeping Nanna, p. 91; October, 1999, Grace Oliff, review of The Young Oxford Book of Folk Tales, p. 166; January, 2000, Connie C. Rockman, review of The World of King Arthur and His Court, p. 140; April, 2003, Cindy Lombardo, review of At the Crossing Places (audiobook), p. 89.

Teacher Librarian, June, 2000, Jessica Higgs, review of The King Who Was and Will Be, p. 54.

Times Educational Supplement, January 19, 1990, John Mole, review of Under the Sun and over the Moon, p. 29; November 29, 1991, James Riordan, review of Tales from Europe, p. 27; May 15, 1992, J. Riordan, review of Long Tom and the Dead Hand, p. S13; May 29, 1992, Gillian Clarke, review of The Tale of Taliesin, p. 30; November 12, 1993, Charles Causley, review of The Labours of Herakles, p. R2; March 24, 1994, John Mole, review of The Green Children, p. R7.

Times Literary Supplement, March 30, 1990, Gerald Mangan, review of Under the Sun and over the Moon, p. 356; June 21, 1991, Virginia Rounding, New and Selected Poems, p. 18.

Young Reader's Review, January, 1967; June, 1968; October, 1969.