Arthur Ransome (January 18, 1884–June 3, 1967) was a British children's author. He is best known for writing the Swallows and Amazons series of children's books, which tell of school-holiday adventures of children, mostly in the Lake District and Norfolk Broads areas of England, and mostly involving small sailing boats. They remain popular to the point that they are a basis of a tourist industry around Windermere and Coniston Water - the two lakes that Ransome used as the basis for his fictional lake.

Earlier in his life, Ransome was involved in the literary and artistic life of London and wrote "Bohemians in London" about some of the personalities he knew. He married Ivy Walker and they had one daughter. Among his other books was one on Oscar Wilde which embroiled him in a libel suit with Lord Alfred Douglas. Ransome won the suit but his wife's behaviour during the trial added to the stress on their marriage. Ransome left his wife and went to Russia in 1913 to study folk lore.

In 1916, he published Old Peter's Russian Tales, a collection of 21 folktales from Russia. After the start of World War I he became a reporter and covered the war on the Eastern Front. He also covered the revolutions in 1917 and developed some sympathy for the Bolshevik cause and its leaders Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky and met his second wife, Evgenia Petrovna Shelepina, who was Trotsky's secretary. After the war he remained in the Baltic states and built a cruising yacht Racundra. He wrote a successful book about his experiences, Racundra's First Cruise.

He then returned to England and settled in the Lake District while continuing to write for the Manchester Guardian. He decided not to accept a position as a foreign correspondent and instead he wrote Swallows and Amazons in 1929. The Walker (Swallows) children in the book were obviously based on the Altounyan family, whose mother was a long time friend of Ransome's. Later he denied the connection as he appears to have been upset by people thinking that the characters were not original creations.

Ransome's writing is noted for his very accurate descriptions of locations and activities in his books. His move to East Anglia brought forth a change of location for four the books. Ransome's own interest in sailing and need to provide an accurate description caused him to undertake a voyage across the North Sea to Flushing. This was described in his book We didn't mean to go to sea, where the fictional "Goblin" was actually his own boat "Nancy Blackett".

There are two (or possibly three) of the Swallows and Amazons books which are not completely realistic. Peter Duck was originally intended to have been a story made up by the children themselves but this introductory passage was dropped from the published book and it appears to be a straightforward story except that the plot is more fantastic than most Swallows and Amazons books. Similarly, a trip to China as a foreign correspondent provided an imaginative springboard for Missee Lee, in which the Swallows and Amazons, together with Captain Flint (the Amazon's uncle Jim Turner), are captured by Chinese pirates. There is more controversy over the final book of the series Great Northern?. The plot and action appears to be realistic but the internal chronology does not fit the usual run of school holidays.

Arthur Ransome was the first winner of the prestigious Carnegie Medal for children's literature. This was awarded for Pigeon Post in 1936.

He was also awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters by Durham University.

'Swallows and Amazons' Bibliography

• Swallows and Amazons (published 1930)
• Swallowdale (1931)
• Peter Duck (1932)
• Winter Holiday (1933)
• Coot Club (1934)
• Pigeon Post (1936)
• We Didn't Mean To Go To Sea (1937)
• Secret Water (1939)
• The Big Six (1940)
• Missee Lee (1941)
• The Picts And The Martyrs (1943)
• Great Northern? (1947)
• Coots in the North (unfinished at the time of his death, published in the 1990s)

External links

• The Arthur Ransome Site, a Web site devoted to Arthur Ransome with links to other sites (http://www.arthur-ransome.org/ar/)

ja:アーサー・ランサム