Posted by Mike Ridley on May 15, 2006 at 15:54:07 from 82.153.194.150 user MikeR.
In Reply to: Steven Spurrier to Juliet Renny posted by Owen Roberts on May 15, 2006 at 11:02:49:
I wonder if the map in the Book Club Associates edition is the same one that appears in the 1960s Puffin paperback editon of S&A. They sound similar, though the artist in the Puffin edition (1968) is not named.
I am interested that Owen thinks Steven Spurrier's endpaper map in the Cape hardback is 'slightly fanciful'.
I have to say I am eternally grateful to Mr Spurrier for enticing me into the world of Arthur Ransome.
Each time I receive my copy of Mixed Moss - with Spurrier's map from S&A as a wrap-around cover - I am transported 40 years back in time to the moment, as a ten-year-old, I first picked up a copy of Swallows & Amazons in my local library in West Cumberland.
Opening the cover, I was entranced by that map. It was just how this ten-year-old imagined an explorer's map should be.
I took the book home with me simply to look at the map with its bright blue sky above the Great Mountains and dangerous forests shown in green.
I started reading the book simply to find out more about the map and discovered the Swallows and Amazons, who were to become my friends during that long summer.
As that year ended I had borrowed the library copy so many times, my parents decided to give me my own copy for Christmas, 'to let other children have a chance to read the book'.
With four children to bring up on a builder's wage, they couldn't afford the Cape hardback and, instead, paid five shillings for the Puffin paperback.
I was delighted to have my own copy, which I still treasure complete with the plastic bag I Sellotaped over the cover to keep it in pristine condition.
But there was one big disappointment.
The blue and green map was nowhere to be seen. Instead, on page eight, was black and white sketch map that, to this ten year old, had obviously been drawn by someone who knew absolutely nothing about the world of the Swallows and Amazons.
The galleon sailing boldly towards the 'Unexplored Arctic' had been sunk! The pirate ship in Rio Bay had upped anchor and gone. The giant octopus in the lagoon on the River Amazon was like a spider.
Where were the savages with their teepee and hissing snake? The mysterious Native Settlement, lair of the Amazon pirates, had become plain old Beckfoot.
A flag, like the one you see on a golf course, had appeared at the North Pole, while the whole northen end of the lake was still marked as 'Unexplored Arctic.'
Who had shot and killed the spouting whale swimming menacingly past Cormorant Island? Where had Cache Island appeared from?
How had the jungle-like forests above the native settlements of Holly Howe and Dixon's Farm become High Greenland? Everyone knew these forests were the home of the savages, not Eskimos.
And where did that tarn magically appear from?
The 'real' map was imprinted in my mind and, though the book was read and re-read until the pages were dog-eared, I never had cause to look at that map again until today.
It certainly seems as if the map in the Puffin paperback was drawn for Winter Holiday and then cobbled into use in S&A by simply sticking a drawing of The Swallow and her crew somewhere off the mouth of the River Amazon.
Whatever the circumstances of how the Puffin edition map came to be created, I certainly owe a deep debt of gratitude to Steven Spurrier for introducing me to AR and for helping develop a life-long love of maps.
I wonder how many other people came to find Arthur Ransome almost by accident.
PS: A while later our library, I presume because of the heavy demand for Swallows & Amazons, aquired the rest of the AR canon and all became clear...