Posted by Duncan on January 05, 2012 at 01:06:57 user Duncan.
In Reply to: Re: Clear Ransome influence posted by Adam Quinan on January 04, 2012 at 13:09:58:
Hi, I wasn't suggesting plagiarism! Merely influence. I was trying to remember the name of the Nesbit family when I was writing about the Narnia lot, because they do all have a lot in common. I suppose the point isn't just the fact that there are two boys and two girls, but also similar character traits. The older girl in the Narnia ones is even called Susan! And she is quite Susanish.
It does make sense, of course, to have a neat gender division of central characters, but AR had a number of other family structures in his books (some apparently only ones - or one and a baby - a couple of broods of two, the Eels, etc, etc.) so the 2 boys, 2 girls, the oldest boy being a capable leader and the oldest girl very sensible is not an essential configuration of characters!