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feather_ghyllRereading 'Secret Water' the other week was a real treat. It was great to spend some time with the Swallows and Amazons again and to discover afresh that the stories stand up to rereading, apart from a few over-emphasised character tics - Bridget's burning desire to be a human sacrifice was classic, her not wanting to be too young for anything mostly funny, but I wished she'd shut up about bleeding the most. The 'Secret Archipelago Expedition' sweeps up the local Mastodon and the reader. Making a map is both play and mission, it's vital to John and Titty especially, partly as a chance to live up to their father's expectations and example, but mainly because they're them and oh, the finale, when the able seamen and the Amazons make it right by snatching the very last possible chance to fill in the map matters.
I know that there are issues, because their play is 'let's pretend we're the explorers/colonisers who know better than the natives' (yes, 'Missee Lee' makes me wince rereading it as an adult), but they play at being pirates too and in this book, the series regulars come across the Eels, a tribe of self-described 'savages' (comprised of a local boy from farming stock and the children of parents who own a yacht). The book builds up to one night where they all join in the play savagery, with little self consciousness. I love the little moment where responsible, sober John, despite being stressed about the imminent return of their parents and the apparent failure of his mission, can't bring himself to regret the wild battle cum sacrifice cum feast instigated by Nancy and her shadow figure Daisy. (I was going to put in quotes in this post, but it would have held up posting this even more).
I must have read 'Swallows and Amazons', the first book in the series, first, but I probably read them out of order, getting them out of the library and rereading them, and I'm not sure if I ever read them all. Although there was a time when I'd have said the Anne series was my favourite series, and I've been reading new-to-me Montgomery's over the last year, I'm basking in a lot of Ransome love at the moment. Looking back, it occurs to me that I liked 'mixed' series when I was at primary school: the Famous Five, the Lone Piners and Swallows and Amazons, and more girl-centric series the older I got: the Chalet girls, the Annes and the Abbey girls. That isn't to say that it was so clear-cut, I mean, I read Mallory Towers along with the Famous Five and was into the Scarlet Pimpernel in the lower part of secondary school, and I probably started buying my own copies of the Swallows and Amazons books about that time, too, thanks to more pocket money. Due to the availability of library copies if I wanted them (and yes, they were hardbacks with the nifty dust-jackets covered in a plastic binding) and my familiarity with the stories, I didn't hunt down copies of my own. Though if they came my way cheaply, i'd buy them. As a result, I've probably read the most land-bound book, 'Pigeon Post', the most. I had half resolved that this year I'd try to complete my collection of Chalet School books (which is mainly Armada paperbacks - I try not to think about the abridging that has gone on in them too hard), but right now I'm more enthused about getting a complete set of the Swallows and Amazons series.
Reading 'Secret Water' set me off to hunt the interwebs for resources. I may have been looking in the wrong places (livejournal and Google mainly) but there doesn't seem to be much around. I wanted something on the chronology of the books, essays on the characters and their roles, with an eye to gender, and on the themes of the books. The story needs all of them, from instigator Nancy, future naval commander John, the excellent Susan (who I really appreciated in 'SW'), dreamer and mapmaker Titty, to the others. There seems to be some stuff out there about Ransome-the-author, but not as much discussion of the text, just lots of short comments that can be summarised as 'Swallows and AMazons, oh yes, I loved them. Wasn't Nancy great? They're pure escapism'. Surely there's more to say than that!
Here's what I did find:
Swallows and Bolsheviks from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
oursin
This knocked my socks off:
Secret waters: Reliving author Arthur Ransome's literary journey along the Essex coast by Graham Hoyland
When my father was the age of an Amazon, one of his teachers was the poet W H Auden, who later called the 1930s "a low, dishonest decade". To adults, perhaps, it was, but to Ransome's fictional children it seems an age of innocence. What parent would now leave their young children (including a six-year-old, Bridget) to camp on an island unsupervised?
[A part of me is outraged on behalf of the excellent Susan Walker.)
Resources: Arthur Ransome/S and A background books [I'd probably need to see reviews before getting them.]
Icons based on cover art bykeswindhover
Any other links would be very much welcomed.
I know that there are issues, because their play is 'let's pretend we're the explorers/colonisers who know better than the natives' (yes, 'Missee Lee' makes me wince rereading it as an adult), but they play at being pirates too and in this book, the series regulars come across the Eels, a tribe of self-described 'savages' (comprised of a local boy from farming stock and the children of parents who own a yacht). The book builds up to one night where they all join in the play savagery, with little self consciousness. I love the little moment where responsible, sober John, despite being stressed about the imminent return of their parents and the apparent failure of his mission, can't bring himself to regret the wild battle cum sacrifice cum feast instigated by Nancy and her shadow figure Daisy. (I was going to put in quotes in this post, but it would have held up posting this even more).
I must have read 'Swallows and Amazons', the first book in the series, first, but I probably read them out of order, getting them out of the library and rereading them, and I'm not sure if I ever read them all. Although there was a time when I'd have said the Anne series was my favourite series, and I've been reading new-to-me Montgomery's over the last year, I'm basking in a lot of Ransome love at the moment. Looking back, it occurs to me that I liked 'mixed' series when I was at primary school: the Famous Five, the Lone Piners and Swallows and Amazons, and more girl-centric series the older I got: the Chalet girls, the Annes and the Abbey girls. That isn't to say that it was so clear-cut, I mean, I read Mallory Towers along with the Famous Five and was into the Scarlet Pimpernel in the lower part of secondary school, and I probably started buying my own copies of the Swallows and Amazons books about that time, too, thanks to more pocket money. Due to the availability of library copies if I wanted them (and yes, they were hardbacks with the nifty dust-jackets covered in a plastic binding) and my familiarity with the stories, I didn't hunt down copies of my own. Though if they came my way cheaply, i'd buy them. As a result, I've probably read the most land-bound book, 'Pigeon Post', the most. I had half resolved that this year I'd try to complete my collection of Chalet School books (which is mainly Armada paperbacks - I try not to think about the abridging that has gone on in them too hard), but right now I'm more enthused about getting a complete set of the Swallows and Amazons series.
Reading 'Secret Water' set me off to hunt the interwebs for resources. I may have been looking in the wrong places (livejournal and Google mainly) but there doesn't seem to be much around. I wanted something on the chronology of the books, essays on the characters and their roles, with an eye to gender, and on the themes of the books. The story needs all of them, from instigator Nancy, future naval commander John, the excellent Susan (who I really appreciated in 'SW'), dreamer and mapmaker Titty, to the others. There seems to be some stuff out there about Ransome-the-author, but not as much discussion of the text, just lots of short comments that can be summarised as 'Swallows and AMazons, oh yes, I loved them. Wasn't Nancy great? They're pure escapism'. Surely there's more to say than that!
Here's what I did find:
Swallows and Bolsheviks from
oursinThis knocked my socks off:
Secret waters: Reliving author Arthur Ransome's literary journey along the Essex coast by Graham Hoyland
When my father was the age of an Amazon, one of his teachers was the poet W H Auden, who later called the 1930s "a low, dishonest decade". To adults, perhaps, it was, but to Ransome's fictional children it seems an age of innocence. What parent would now leave their young children (including a six-year-old, Bridget) to camp on an island unsupervised?
[A part of me is outraged on behalf of the excellent Susan Walker.)
Resources: Arthur Ransome/S and A background books [I'd probably need to see reviews before getting them.]
Icons based on cover art by
keswindhoverAny other links would be very much welcomed.
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no subject
Date: 2007-06-20 07:17 pm (UTC)There is also info on the books on Wikipedia, here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swallows_and_Amazons_%28series%29), with various links, but I doubt it's in any great depth.
I tend to group AR's books into levels - my favourites are, in chronological order, S&A, Winter Holiday, Pigeon Post, We Didn't Mean to go to Sea, and The Picts and the Martyrs. Next are Swallowdale, Coot Club, Secret Water and The Big Six, and at the end and never reread are Peter Duck, Missee Lee and Great Northern? Winter Holiday is probably my absolute favourite. Or possibly WDMTGTS.
Secret Water is probably my least favourite of the ones I do read, I'm not sure exactly why (it's been a while since I did read it) but I think that all that map making gets a bit tedious after a while. It does have its moments - the journey back through the rising water, the North West passage - but overall it just doesn't do it for me.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-20 09:49 pm (UTC)I couldn't say which are my favourite, probably because I've read them in such a jumble over the years. Like I said, I thoroughly enjoyed Secret Water. I was more interested in why the map-making mattered to the Walkers than the act itself, but I didn't feel it went on too long, though I glazed past the filling maps. And the sequence of the rising water was fantastic. What I also love at the end is that John and Susan are such cross patches about the others' apparent desertion, when the reader knows they're making it right, and then the chapter from the explorers' point of view is a treat.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-21 12:21 am (UTC)I tend to like the lake books best - 'Swallows and Amazons', 'Swallowdale', 'Winter Holiday' and 'Pigeon Post', but not so much 'The Picts and the Martyrs', though I haven't read that one for a while. I keep intending to re-read the whole series in order. Maybe I'll do that one day soon, because there's a lot of them that I haven't read for years. I've got copies of all the books except 'Missee Lee', 'The Big Six' and 'Coot Club'; I'm keeping an eye out for those ones but I'm hampered by the need to have them in the same edition as the others!
I'm getting a 'page cannot be displayed' on your resources link so I can't see what's on there, but I have 'Arthur Ransome and Captain Flint's Trunk' by Christina Hardyment and 'Signalling From Mars: the Letters of Arthur Ransome', edited by Hugh Brogan. 'Captain Flint's Trunk' is the story of an S&A fan who goes on a quest (with children in tow) for the 'real' locations. It's a mix of general Ransome facts, travelly-touristy stuff about the Lake District and other areas and general love for the books. I skim read the Letters once a few years ago and seem to recall there being some interesting stuff in there.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-21 09:08 pm (UTC)I'm keeping an eye out for those ones but I'm hampered by the need to have them in the same edition as the others! Oh, I can understand that, although my need to own the story to read it is usually stronger :)
Yes, the page seemed to be broken, but I think the first book you mention was on it on least. They sound interesting!