Posted by Peter Hyland on January 04, 2013 at 09:32:52 user Peter_H.
In Reply to: Re: Winter Holiday 1939 posted by Peter Ceresole on January 04, 2013 at 02:40:14:
I think Peter C and I are roughly the same age, so when he recalls that his mother read ‘Swallowdale’ to him, I am curious to know how she had heard of AR’s books. My own parents, presumably of about the same age, had never read Ransome books, and nor had the aunt who bought ‘Picts & Martyrs’ for me – they were all born too early. When they were children AR had not yet started writing the S&A books.
Someone must have told my aunt that AR was a good writer for children. She then went into W H Smiths and asked for the “latest Arthur Ransome book”, rather as one might go in and ask for the “latest P D James”. In early 1947 the newest AR book was ‘The Picts and the Martyrs’ but my aunt did not realise that the books were sequential. On reading PM I soon cottoned on to the fact that the characters had appeared in the earlier stories and I started to ask for them. The next book I got was ‘Pigeon Post’ which was at least a step in the right direction, and it had the familiar Ds in it, as well as the Amazons. However, I could never persuade my relatives that the books should ideally be read in order, starting with S&A.
One of the problems with writing for children is that in a sense you also have to write for the adults who will buy your books for the children. You then somehow have to get over the gap when the first child readers of your books are growing up but are not old enough to be marrying and having children of their own for whom to buy your books and continue your reputation. Ransome got over this gap mainly, I think, because he wrote over a long period and was such a good author that libraries stocked his books. It is hard to describe how important libraries were in the 1940s and 50s – everyone I knew borrowed from the library, both public (municipal) and private (e.g. Boots the Chemists’ Library – they had a library in all large branches). I finally managed to read ‘Swallows and Amazons’ when I saw it in our school library!