Posted by Duncan on February 23, 2008 at 13:22:23 from 195.93.21.2 user Duncan.
In Reply to: Ransomes recall posted by ken on February 07, 2008 at 18:06:51:
Okay - I'm awfully intrigued. Are you researching one of the people Ransome met when researching his Wilde book?
I have been intrigued, for some time now, by the reference (when we get to about 1911) to Arthur Ransom (no 'e'!) Intriguing only because he tells us of the meeting and then says nothing of it. It is not a rare name. An Arthur Ransom translated an Austrian book of Economics in 1891 (might be the same chap); I always assumed it was the Arthur Ransom who used to write very regularly for left-wing publications around the turn of the century (particularly the Clarion). The interesting thing about that is, when I first came across those articles I thought I'd found a hitherto undiscovered set of AR writings disguised under an unimaginative nom de plume! (Many Clarion writers chose to use false names to publish under). And I thought maybe I'd found proof of political writing before Russia (we know AR took the Clarion for a little while as a student - quite a radical thing to do at the time). Finding the reference to this 'much older' AR in the autobiography was always interesting. A tiny part of me has often wondered if this were a cheeky clue that he had indeed invented an Arthur Ransom to author political writings in his younger days?
(Having said that, the existence of several older Arthur Ransoms is not in doubt, and at least one had some literary connection, so it is probably much more prosaic than my tiny part would like!)