Posted by Bill D NZ on May 31, 2023 at 07:49:20 user BillD.
While Googling for the previous two posts, I cam across a 2012 PhD Thesis by Hazel Sheeky: "Camping and Tramping, Swallows and Amazons: Interwar Children’s Fiction and the Search for England"
https://theses.ncl.ac.uk/jspui/bitstream/10443/1502/1/Sheeky%2012.pdf
I haven't fully read this, but dipping in to it found it very interesting, both in it's discussion of aspects AR and the SA canon, but also looking at other similar writers, some of them new to me.
Has this thesis been discussed before? If not, worth a look. e.g. Mates Not Captains: Sailing Girls; Undermining Captain Nancy Blackett; The Embryo Nelson: John Walker; The Rebellion of Roger Walker
Interestingly Sheeky talks about a gradual move in the SA books from Imperial exploration (a chapter on mapmaking) and colonisation (John Walker) to scientific discovery (Dick), but makes no mention of AR's Bolshevik & Russian sympathies. Surely she must have known of them? Was AR an Imperialist?
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