Posted by andy bolger on December 20, 2000 at 20:25:12 from 213.122.219.135:
In Reply to: Aubrey de Selincourt books? posted by alan truelove on December 20, 2000 at 17:52:25:
I've read de Selincourt's "Family Afloat", a bit wooden but within the genre, I'd say.
On the subject of genres, when I was an AR addicted boy I had a very clear idea of what genre AR was in and desperately sought more of the same. ( I did know the difference between quality and quantity but if I couldn't have the one I'd make do with t'other). And in my mind what separated Ransome sheep from Blyton goats was that AR's books were "realistic". By which I mean that the plots were generated by the children's imagination in interaction with each other, their boats and the landscape. They didn't rely on adult baddies ( spies, criminals etc.) to drive them along like Malcolm Saville, Bylton, Atkinson and others. Nor were they fantasies like my other favourites; Tolkein, Lewis and Garner.
O.K., I'm a bit ( i.e. a lot) older now and I can see that AR doesn't always fit this formula ( the burglars in S&A, the Hullabaloos in CC, he who must not be misspelt in B6, etc.) but I still think the general idea stands. I read in Someone or Other's Companion to Children's Literature that AR had spawned a genre and for years no children's book was complete without a complement of boats and tents. But did he ? If people think my depiction of the genre has any validity which books would be in it.?
I can think of precursors; Bevis, obviously, Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn perhaps, the Bastable stories of E Nesbit, arguably. (Joan Aitken no less, has written a paper which comments on the Bastables as the "literary ancestors" of the Walkers) But what of the followers on? Some have been suggested in this thread; de Selincourt, the Far Distant Oxus trilogy, those Scottish books who's author Ican't recall. But it hardly makes a shelf full let alone a genre. There are others of course, those by Nan Chauncy set in Tasmania , ( perhaps AusTars could tell us more) a book about archeology and avocets set in Suffolk, name and title lost in the mists of time and another involving a D & G type gang who had their h.q. in a hulk in the Hayle estuary in N. Cornwall. Did they too, not mean to go to sea?
Any names?
Any more candidates?