Rosemary Sutcliff, Outcast, adapted by David Scott Daniel, Story Time, BBC Home Service, 1966.

Rosemary Sutcliff, Outcast, adapted by David Fickling, Textbook for foreign speakers. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979.

German: Beric, der Augestossene, trans. Ute Yusuf-Dorsch, Gütelsloh: Bertelsmann, 1959.

German: Der Augestossene, trans. Birgitta Kicherer, Stuttgart: Urachhaus, 1986.

Japanese: Keruto to roma no musuko, trans. Kari Hajima, ほるぷ出版, 2002.

Spanish: Desterrado, trans. Juan M. Valcárcel, Barcelona: Plataforma, 2010.

Swedish: Den ensamme romaren, trans. Per Kellberg, Stockholm: Bonnier, 1958.

Outcast is a young adult novel that tells the story of a teenager named Beric, a Roman by birth who is adopted, but subsequently cast out, by a British tribe. Sometime in the mid-second century CE, on the south coast of modern Devon, Cunori of the Dumnonii tribe finds a baby boy washed ashore following a shipwreck. The boy's deceased parents are Romans, but despite the warnings of the local Druid Merddyn, Cunori adopts the boy and convinces his clan, with the help of the blind harpist Rhiada, to let the boy stay with them. Cunori names the boy Beric, and for sixteen years Beric is raised as one of the tribe, but a harsh winter generates worry among his adopted clansmen that the boy has brought them an ill fortune, just as Merddyn had claimed. As a result, the decision is taken to banish Beric, who then heads to Isca Dumnoniorum to join the Roman army. However, before he can find his way to the fort, Beric is kidnapped by slavers, taken to Rome and sold to a magistrate named Piso. Although he befriends Piso's daughter, Piso's son Glaucus is arrogant and spiteful, and after Beric accidentally spills wine on Glaucus during a dinner party he is threatened with banishment to the salt mines. Escaping, Beric goes on the run but is captured and press-ganged into serving as galley rower in the Rhenus Fleet, although after an altercation with his overseer he is flogged and thrown into the sea. Beric then finds himself swept up on the British coast, and is nursed back to health under the care of the Romano-British centurion and engineer Titus Drusus Justinius, whose dead son Beric resembles. Justinius is able to gain Beric his freedom while they work together to rebuild the coastal wall along the Romney Marshes, and the story concludes with Beric considering joining the Roman army.

As with many of Sutcliff's novels, the book focuses on a young man whose expected path in life is radically altered, and he is forced to undergo a journey in order to find where he belongs. As Sutcliff described to Emma Fisher: "I think really I've only got one plot; a boy growing up and finding himself, and finding his soul in the process, and achieving what he sets out to achieve; or not achieving it, and finding his own soul in the process of not achieving it. And becoming part of society" (Fisher 1974, p. 190). In this case, Beric presumes he will become a warrior among the Dumnonii, but he is exiled and must endure a number of trials before finding a place in the home of Justinius, and possibly the Roman army. In relation to this, the question of identity is also a recurrent theme, with Beric unsure of where he belongs: he is raised by a British tribe who then reject him, but he is also ill-treated in Rome where his blood relatives are from. In the end, it is a man between the two worlds, the Romano-British Justinius, who adopts Beric. This is perhaps a nod to the benefits that the combination of British and Roman qualities will bring (which are also illustrated by the Romano-British heroes of Sutcliff's other novels), and will one day provide the foundation for Britain's own imperial status.

The story also draws on traditional narratives of the Roman core declining into corruption and greed, while Britain has not yet succumbed to such temptations. In this regard, Sutcliff was certainly influenced by the works of Kipling's historical narratives for children, including Puck of Pook’s Hill (1906) and A School History of England (1911), which forewarned how an Empire (Roman or British) risks decline if its inhabitants become too self-indulgent. In Outcast, aristocratic characters such as Glaucus and the Legate that Beric encounters while serving as a rower in the Rhenus fleet act as the antagonists of the story, coming in notable contrast to the Romano-British Justinius who saves Beric. Moreover, the moral decay of Rome is inferred its continuing reliance on slavery, while in contrast there is little reference to slavery in British contexts. Indeed, Beric essentially equates a return to Britain with gaining his freedom, even though he has no one to return to. Slaves rarely feature in Sutcliff's Roman Britain novels, with Marcus freeing Esca soon after purchasing him in The Eagle of the Ninth, and subsequent generations of Aquilii family do not own slaves in later novels. Additionally, Beric observes in Rome how the temple of Sylvan Pan, a deity symbolising nature, is rarely visited by anyone and has begun to decay. This perhaps represents the worsening nature of man's relationship with his environment, especially in large cities, and this is another common feature of post-war children's literature, as concerns increased regarding the damage that was resulting from pollution and urban expansion (Butler 2006, p. 125–136).

The relationship between men and dogs is also a prominent theme; Beric must leave behind his faithful dog Gelert who wants to go with him, and when Beric later decides to flee Justinius's home he meets Canog, who has been kicked by a pony and, like Beric, is an outcast that needs nursing back to health. The solace Beric finds in his relationship with Gelert and Canog is autobiographical, for Sutcliff kept dogs throughout her life and particularly in her childhood they gave her a sense of companionship that her disability and transient lifestyle prevented her developing with other children (Sutcliff 1983, pp. 22–24, 82–83). The theme of mutual affection between a dog and its owner can be traced back to antiquity, with perhaps the most famous example Odysseus and his dog Argos, as well as being a common trope in modern Children's Literature, such as Timmy from the Famous Five, Toto in The Wizard of Oz, and Fang in the Harry Potter series. 

Kipling's poem The Roman Centurion's Song, in which a Roman soldier asks "Let me work here for Britain's sake – at any task you will – A marsh to drain", may have served as influence for the story, while Beric's adoption in the "wild" and subsequent return to "civilisation" draws comparisons with Mowgli in The Jungle Book (Wright 1981, pp. 91–94). The aforementioned decaying temple to the Sylvan Pan in Rome may also allude to Kipling's work, as the character of Puck (who originally appeared in Shakespeare's A Midsummer's Night Dream) was based on Pan. Additionally, the character of Beric might have been inspired in part by the G.A. Henty novel Beric the Briton (1893), also written for teenage boys, in which a young British warrior is captured and taken to Rome, wins his freedom, and then returns to Britain as a governor. 

Sutcliff's years living in North Devon clearly served as an inspiration for the story, with the Dumnonii having inhabited the area in the Late Iron Age to the Roman period, while the post-war reconstruction period had revealed much about Exeter's Roman predecessor Isca Dumnoniorum (Mattingly 2006, pp. 401–408; Wiseman 2020, pp. 31–49). A discussion of the sources Sutcliff used for each novel can be found in Talcroft's (1995) study.

Fisher, Emma, ‘Rosemary Sutcliff’, in Justin Wintle, ed., The Pied Pipers: Interviews with the Influential Creators of Children's Literature, London: Paddington Press, 1974, 182–191.

Henty, G. A., Beric the Briton: A Story of the Roman Invasion, London: Blackie and Son, 1892.

Kipling, Rudyard, Puck of Pook’s Hill, London: Macmillan and Company, 1906.

Kipling, Rudyard and Charles Robert Leslie Fletcher, A School History of England, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911.

Mattingly, David, An Imperial Possession: Britain in the Roman Empire 54 BC–AD 409, London: Allen Lane, 2006.

Meek, Margaret, Rosemary Sutcliff, London: Bodley Head, 1962.

Sutcliff, Rosemary, Blue Remembered Hills, London: Bodley Head, 1993.

Talcroft, Barbara, Death of the Corn King: King and Goddess in Rosemary Sutcliff's Historical Novels for Young Adults, London: The Scarecrow Press, 1995.

Thompson, Raymond H., "Interview with Rosemary Sutcliff", 1986, available at the Camelot Project website (accessed: July 12, 2021). 

Wiseman, Peter, Exeter and the Ancient World: People and Stories, Exeter: The Mint Press, 2020.

Wright, Hilary, "Shadows on the Downs: Some Influences of Rudyard Kipling on Rosemary Sutcliff", Children's Literature in Education 12.2 (1981): 90–102.