Although Susan Cooper has lived in the United States since 1963, she considers herself, and is considered by her readers, to be a British writer of fantasy. All of her major fiction resonates with themes, settings, myths, and legends associated with Great Britain, especially her native Buckinghamshire, Cornwall, and Wales. She found it ironic that the American Library Association awarded her its highest honor for a children's book author, the John Newbery Medal, in 1976, its centennial year, for The Grey King (1975), the fourth book of her Dark Is Rising fantasy sequence. That series of five books, each an award winner, integrates the traditional lore of the British Isles with modern concerns. Her work, although commercially designated for a younger audience, exemplifies sophisticated mythopoeic writing not limited to that age group and is one of the major contributions to Arthurian fantasy of the 1970s.

Susan Mary Cooper, the daughter of...