Posted by Guy C. on December 08, 2005 at 11:03:38 from 85.35.55.194 user Astronomer_Guy.
In Reply to: Re: Industrial Heritage (was Lydia Eva - was Re: Silting of the Yare)-the whole question of Ransome posted by Peter Ceresole on December 08, 2005 at 08:51:17:
It's worth talking a bit about "the whole question" of spending our free moments chatting about "children's books".
First, it is important to remember that the idea of a "children's book" is a somewhat modern idea, driven by very understandable needs in the publishing world to get the proper product to an audience most likely to appreciate it. As one of the first modern popular children's writers, Ransome himself was a part of this whole movement. Recall that many books that today are considered for "children" such as Treasure Island or the works of Jules Verne were originally written for adults. Many "children's" books, like the works of Lewis Carroll, have obvious depths for adults that presumably most children would miss. And I believe somewhere Ransome himself said, "I write books to please myself, and if children like them, then that makes me a children's writer."
Second, I am fascinated by how much of our adult lives are shaped and directed by the interests and passions we develop in those few, very brief years of our childhood. Read carefully the adventures of these children, and you will see that Ransome himself was very much aware of this very fact, and it represents a major theme of all his work: childhood dreams and role-plays as the basis and foundation of one's adult life. For myself, I was already interested in boats and in astronomy before I discovered Ransome, but certainly the way I approached both were strongly influenced by the examples I saw in the characters that Ransome presented. I am also amused to see how I have gone back to these books in my adult life (I rediscovered them when I was a graduate student, looking for a break from my thesis work) and gotten both comfort and inspiration from them.
Finally, having discovered how badly many of my other favorites from childhood look when viewed with adult eyes, I am all the more impressed with how well Ransome has aged. He wrote books that were meant by him to be contemporary; they have become fascinating period pieces, windows to a series of historical moments that might easily have been lost except for him.
Ransome was not a writer for or about children; he was a writer for, and about, human beings. That makes him timeless.