Posted by steve on January 09, 2001 at 08:09:29 from 203.109.252.14:
Summer holidays for me here in NZ.
I was reading GN and thought while I reading that there seemed to be less illustrations than in previous books.
So with that in mind I carried out a bit of research. The results may interest others so here goes..
GN doesnt have significantly less pictures than the other books, in fact PM at 20 and PD at 21 have the least "main pictures" ie those listed in the contents. GN has 23.
PD though has 432 pages v PM 303 so on a picture per page basis PD is the least illustrated of all the books.
The most illustrated of the books is another interesting point. SW (rather surprisingly, to me anyway) has 41 main pics, although 11 of them are of the map in various stages of completeness. WDMTGTS however has 34 individual pics and fewer pages 351v380 so I believe deserves the title of most illustrated.
When I looked at the other pics (the small ones that often have the most detail) SD is head and shoulders above the rest. Ransome placed pics at the start and the end of most chapters, using 29 different pictures a total of 67 times.
It never occured to me that SD was the only book with pics at the start of chapters until this exercise( only been reading Swallows and Amazons for 30 years).
PM and ML on the other hand had only 17 small pics each, PM 16 diffeernt with 1 repeated and ML 15 different with 2 repeated.
Some other observations:
The most used pic in an individual book was that of the Pestle and mortar used 6 times in PP.
The pic of the Divining rod ended 3 consecutive chapters of PP (13,14&15).
The runaway villan pic in BS (end of chapt 18) is very "unRansomeish) and not at all like any other pic produced in the books.
There is of course the picture on the Dust Jacket in PM that didnt appear in the text.
And the picture in GN? that is different on the Dust Jacket to the one in the text (One in the Text was found to be wrong and amended but not on the cover)
And the small pic showing Col Jolys calling card is slighty different in PP to that shown in PM. Also missing is his mobile number, a must for an emergency worker!