And to mark World Book Day, on March 4, 2021, we’ve rounded up some Sunderland authors who’ve made their mark in the literary world.
9. Mary Stewart
Lady Mary Stewart was born in Sunderland but moved to Edinburgh with her husband Frederick after they married. In a successful and sustained writing career that began in 1954, she wrote a string of best-selling romantic novels including Madam, Will You Talk?, Touch Not The Cat and The Crystal Cave and sold more than 30 million books in the US alone. Born in 1916, she was able to read from the age of three and was writing stories about her toys by the age of seven. In 1953, she submitted the first of her 24 novels to a publisher who immediately snapped it up. And when it eventually hit the shelves in 1954, she continued to release a new novel once a year until the late 1980s. Photo: submitted
10. The Venerable Bede
The seventh and eighth century monk, saint and Mackem was the greatest scholar of his day and a prolific writer of history, geography, hagiography, science, poems and more. His best known work is his smash hit The Ecclesiastical History of the English People; which gave an account of every significant event in this country between the Roman Invasion and AD 731 when the book was written. Written in Latin (there was no English as such in the eighth century) it’s a highly important reference book on Anglo-Saxon history, which gave England some identity as it emerged from the dark ages as a scattering of separate kingdoms. Much of it was written at St Peter’s in Monkwearmouth. Although generally agreed to be short on laughs, it’s still the most important work of literature to emerge from Wearside. Photo: submitted