Posted by Magnus Smith on January 14, 2016 at 02:05:39 user Magnus.
In Reply to: The red slippers posted by Peter Stanley on January 12, 2016 at 03:34:57:
The dedication which mentioned the slippers was withdrawn when the Ransomes fell out with the Altounyans, and later books had a page on "How I came to write Swallows and Amazons" instead.
If your essay is more about the slippers, then you don't have to worry about the complexity of human relationships, falling out, making up, etc. And you can ignore an author's issues of using real children's names in a book, and later becoming over-protective of your 'creations', jealousy and so on. It is a very difficult situation to explain.
If your essay is about "things" in terms of keepsakes/curios/mementos/knick-knacks, then it would be worth us talking over email as I've looked into this topic before, trying to catalog the ornaments and touchstones that Ransome owned, and also looking at the 'dens' of other authors (like Roald Dahl) who surrounded themselves with little items of special meaning whilst writing. I haven't published anything from my research though.
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