Edward Rutherfurd is a pen name for Francis Edward Wintle^[1] (born in 1948). He is best known as a writer of epic historical novels that span long periods of history but are set in particular places. His debut novel, Sarum, set the pattern for his work with a ten-thousand-year storyline.

Rutherfurd attended the University of Cambridge and Stanford Business School, where he earned a Sloan fellowship.^[1][2] After graduating he worked in political research, bookselling and publishing.^[2] He abandoned his career in the book trade in 1983 and returned to his childhood home to write Sarum, a historical novel with a ten-thousand year story, set in the area around the ancient monument of Stonehenge and Salisbury.^[3]

Sarum was published in 1987 and became an instant international best-seller, remaining for 23 weeks on the New York Times Bestseller List.^{[citation needed]} Since then he produced seven more New York Times best-sellers: Russka, a novel of Russia; London; The Forest, set in England's New Forest which lies close by Sarum; two novels, Dublin: Foundation (The Princes of Ireland) and Ireland: Awakening (The Rebels of Ireland), which cover the story of Ireland from the time just before Saint Patrick to the twentieth century; New York; Paris; and China.

His books have sold more than fifteen million copies and been translated into twenty languages.^[4] Rutherfurd settled near Dublin, Ireland in the early 1990s, but currently divides his time between Europe and North America.^[2]

New York: The Novel, won the Langum Prize for American Historical Fiction in 2009^[5] and was awarded the Washington Irving Medal for Literary Excellence, by the Saint Nicholas Society of the City of New York, in 2011.^[6]

In 2015 Edward Rutherfurd was the recipient of the City of Zaragoza's International Historical Novel Honor Award "for his body of work in the field of the historical novel."^[7]

Rutherfurd invents four to six fictional families and tells the stories of their descendants. Using this framework, he chronicles the history of a place, often from the beginning of civilisation to modern times – a kind of historical fiction inspired by the work of James Michener.^[8]

Rutherfurd's novels are generally at least 500 pages in length and sometimes more than 1,000. Divided into a number of parts, each chapter represents a different era in the place where the novel is set. There is usually an extensive family tree in the introduction, with each generational line matching the corresponding chapters.^[9][10]

• Sarum (1987) latterly titled Sarum: the Novel of England
• Russka (1991) sometimes titled Russka: the Novel of Russia
• London (1997)
• The Forest (2000)
• Dublin: Foundation (2004) titled The Princes of Ireland: The Dublin Saga in North America
• Ireland: Awakening (2006) titled The Rebels of Ireland: The Dublin Saga in North America
• New York (September 2009)
• Paris (April 2013) sometimes titled Paris: A Novel
• China (May 2021)^[11]