The great English children's fantasy of the 1970s: it set Arthurian and Celtic myth loose in the modern countryside, won a Newbery Medal, and still returns every midwinter as a shared reading ritual.
Overview
The Dark Is Rising sequence is a five-book series by the English writer Susan Cooper, published between 1965 and 1977, in which children in modern Britain are drawn into an age-old conflict between the Light and the Dark. Its world is not a secondary world but England and Wales as they were in the 1960s and 1970s — villages, farms, beaches, a family home in the Thames Valley — with the ancient past lying just under the surface. Arthurian legend, Welsh myth, English folk custom and Norse echoes rise out of the landscape at midwinter and midsummer. It remains one of the most admired works of British children's fantasy.
Origins
Cooper, born in 1935 in Buckinghamshire, read English at Somerville College, Oxford, where she became the first woman to edit the student newspaper Cherwell, and then became a reporter for The Sunday Times, where her editor was Ian Fleming. Over Sea, Under Stone (1965), a Cornish treasure hunt for the Holy Grail, began as a standalone adventure. Living in the United States from 1963, Cooper returned to its world years later and planned four further books as a single sequence: The Dark Is Rising (1973), Greenwitch (1974), The Grey King (1975) and Silver on the Tree (1977). She drew on Arthurian romance, Welsh legend, English folklore and Robert Graves's The White Goddess.
The story
In Over Sea, Under Stone, the three Drew children — Simon, Jane and Barney — find an ancient map on holiday in Cornwall and, guided by their mysterious great-uncle Merriman Lyon, race agents of the Dark to recover a grail. The second book changes everything. On Midwinter's Eve, his eleventh birthday, Will Stanton, the seventh son of a seventh son, wakes into a snowbound world out of time and learns that he is the last-born of the Old Ones, immortals who serve the Light. Merriman, it becomes clear, is the Old One remembered as Merlin. Will must gather six Signs of power before Twelfth Night while the Dark besieges his village with snow and fear.
Greenwitch unites Will with the Drews in Cornwall around an old village rite in which a figure of leaves and branches is cast into the sea. The Grey King, set in Wales, pairs Will with Bran Davies, a strange white-haired boy who turns out to be the son of King Arthur. Silver on the Tree brings all the children together for the final rising of the Dark.
Reception & impact
The series won major awards. The Dark Is Rising was a Newbery Honor book in 1974; The Grey King won the Newbery Medal in 1976, and both The Grey King and Silver on the Tree won the Welsh Tir na n-Og Award. Cooper later received the Margaret A. Edwards Award (2012) for her contribution to young adult literature and the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement (2013).
Screen adaptations have been less happy. The 2007 film, released in the United States as The Seeker, aged Will up, made him American and departed widely from the plot, and it was poorly received. Radio has served the books better: in December 2022 the BBC World Service broadcast a 12-part dramatization of The Dark Is Rising, adapted by Simon McBurney with the nature writer Robert Macfarlane, each episode timed to the day on which its events occur.
Legacy
The Dark Is Rising sequence helped establish a distinctly British strand of fantasy in which myth erupts into the present-day landscape — a strand that runs through later children's fantasy and anticipates the contemporary and urban fantasy that followed. Its Merriman is one of the great Merlins, heir to T. H. White's, and its linking of places with old powers foreshadows the way later fantasy, and many roleplaying campaigns, treat ley lines, standing stones and seasonal rites as sources of magic. Alongside Lloyd Alexander's The Chronicles of Prydain, it proved that Celtic and Arthurian myth could speak to young readers of the space age.
Marginalia
- Cooper was the first woman to edit Oxford's student newspaper, Cherwell, and later worked for The Sunday Times under Ian Fleming.
- The first book, Over Sea, Under Stone (1965), is a treasure hunt; the Old Ones and Will Stanton arrive only in the second, eight years later.
- The Grey King won the 1976 Newbery Medal; The Dark Is Rising was a 1974 Newbery Honor book.
- The Dark Is Rising takes place between Midwinter Eve and Twelfth Night, and many readers now read it along in real time each December.
- The 2007 film, released as The Seeker in the US, made Will an American and was poorly received.
- A 12-part BBC World Service radio drama, adapted by Simon McBurney with Robert Macfarlane, began airing in December 2022.
Quick answers
- When was The Dark Is Rising first published?
- The Dark Is Rising was first published in 1965–77.
- Who created The Dark Is Rising?
- The Dark Is Rising was made by Susan Cooper (author).
- What kind of work is The Dark Is Rising?
- The Dark Is Rising is a book series in the Children's & YA Fantasy, Arthurian Fantasy and Mythic Fantasy tradition.
- Why is The Dark Is Rising important?
- The great English children's fantasy of the 1970s: it set Arthurian and Celtic myth loose in the modern countryside, won a Newbery Medal, and still returns every midwinter as a shared reading ritual.