English author and journalist (1884?1967)
Arthur Michell Ransome
CBE
(18 January 1884 ? 3 June 1967) was an English author and journalist. He is best known for writing and illustrating the
Swallows and Amazons
series
of
children's books
about the school-holiday adventures of children, mostly in the
Lake District
and the
Norfolk Broads
. The entire series remains in print, and
Swallows and Amazons
is the basis for a tourist industry around
Windermere
and
Coniston Water
, the two lakes Ransome adapted as his fictional North Country lake.
He also wrote about the literary life of London, and about Russia before, during, and after the
revolutions of 1917
. His connection with the leaders of the Revolution led to him providing information to the
Secret Intelligence Service
, while he was also suspected by
MI5
of being a Soviet spy.
Early life
[
edit
]
Ransome was the son of Cyril Ransome (1851?1897) and his wife Edith Ransome (nee Baker Boulton) (1862?1944).
[1]
Arthur was the eldest of four children: he had two sisters Cecily and Joyce, and a brother Geoffrey who was killed in the First World War in 1918.
[2]
Joyce married into the
Lupton family
, well-connected industrialists and politicians; she named one of her sons Arthur Ralph Ransome Lupton (1924?2009).
Ransome was born in
Leeds
; the house at 6 Ash Grove, in the
Hyde Park
area, has a
blue plaque
beside the door commemorating his birthplace.
[3]
[4]
Ransome's father was professor of history at
Yorkshire College
(now the
University of Leeds
). The family regularly holidayed at
Nibthwaite
in the Lake District, and he was carried up to the top of
Coniston Old Man
as an infant. His father's premature death in 1897 had a lasting effect on him. His mother did not want him to abandon his studies for writing, but was later supportive of his books. She urged him to publish
The Picts and the Martyrs
in 1943, although his second wife Evgenia hated it, and was often discouraging about his books while he was writing them.
Ransome was educated first in
Windermere
and then at
Rugby School
(where he lived in the same study room that had been used by
Lewis Carroll
) but did not entirely enjoy the experience, because of his poor eyesight, lack of athletic skill, and limited academic achievement. He studied chemistry at Yorkshire College, where his late father had worked.
Writing career
[
edit
]
After a year at Yorkshire College, he abandoned his studies and went to London to become a writer. He took low-paying jobs as an office assistant in a publishing company and as editor of a failing magazine,
Temple Bar Magazine
, while establishing himself as a member of the literary scene.
Some of Ransome's early works were
The Nature Books for Children
, a series of children's books commissioned by Anthony Treherne. Only three of the six planned volumes were published before the publisher went bankrupt. They are available on the
All Things Ransome
website.
[5]
In his first important book,
Bohemia in London
(1907), Ransome introduced the history of the city's
Bohemian
literary and artistic communities and some of its current representatives. A curiosity in 1903 about a visiting Japanese poet,
Yone Noguchi
, led to an ongoing friendship with Japanese painter (and
Chelsea
neighbour)
Yoshio Markino
, who in turn introduced him to the Bohemian circle of
Pamela Colman Smith
, an artist best known for illustrating the
Rider?Waite tarot deck
.
Ransome married Ivy Constance Walker in 1909 and they had one daughter, Tabitha. It was not a happy marriage; Ransome found his wife's demands to spend less time on writing and more with her and their daughter a great strain; his biographer
Hugh Brogan
writes that "it was impossible to be a good husband to Ivy". They divorced in 1924.
[6]
Ransome began writing books of biography and literary criticism on various authors; one on
Edgar Allan Poe
was published in 1910 and another on
Oscar Wilde
in 1912. However, the latter embroiled him in a libel suit with
Lord Alfred Douglas
. His wife attended the 1913 trial, sitting in the public gallery as Ransome would not let her sit beside him. Her apparent enjoyment of the public notoriety the case attracted added to the stress on their marriage. The publisher Daniel Macmillan dined with the couple every day during the trial so that Ivy could not quarrel with Arthur.
[7]
Ransome won the suit, supported by
Robbie Ross
, the editor of
De Profundis
. Douglas was bankrupted by the failed libel suit.
[8]
Ransome did, however, remove the offending passages from the second edition of his book
[9]
and refused all interviews, despite the obvious publicity value.
[10]
Adding to Ransome's "wretched" 13 months waiting for the case to come to trial was the action of his publisher,
Charles Granville
.
Oscar Wilde, a critical study
had been prepared under the guidance of publisher
Martin Secker
, but Granville had promised better returns and a guaranteed and steady income. Secker agreed to release the rights, and Ransome handed
Poe
and
Wilde
over to Granville. The work on Wilde was well received and successful, running to eight editions, but Ransome saw little in return; in 1912 Granville was charged with embezzlement and fled the country, leaving Ransome to struggle even to register himself as a creditor of Granville's ruined company. Furthermore, his neglect of his health (he suffered from
piles
and a
stomach ulcer
) had been exacerbated by the pressure of defending the legal action.
[11]
Ransome had also been working on a similar literary biography of
Robert Louis Stevenson
, but that was abandoned with the manuscript in the first draft and not rediscovered until 1999. It was subsequently edited and finally published almost a century later in 2011 as
Arthur Ransome's Long-lost Study of Robert Louis Stevenson
.
As an enthusiast for
detective fiction
, between 1939 and 1940 Ransome contributed to
The Observer
as a reviewer of new detective novels, using the pen-name of
William Blunt
.
[12]
Foreign correspondent
[
edit
]
In 1913 Ransome left his first wife and daughter and went to Russia to study
its folklore
. In 1915, Ransome published
The Elixir of Life
(published by
Methuen, London
), which was to be his only full-length novel apart from the
Swallows and Amazons
series. It is a
gothic romance
concerning a youth who chances upon an alchemist who has discovered the titular
elixir of life
, whose powers must be renewed by the spilling of human blood. He published
Old Peter's Russian Tales
, a collection of 21 folktales from Russia, the following year.
After the start of the
First World War
, in 1914, he became a foreign correspondent and covered the war on the
Eastern Front
for a radical newspaper,
The Daily News
. He also covered the
Russian Revolutions
of 1917 and came to sympathise with the
Bolshevik
cause, becoming personally close to a number of its leaders, including
Vladimir Lenin
,
Leon Trotsky
and
Karl Radek
. He met the woman who would become his second wife, Evgenia Petrovna Shelepina, who then worked as Trotsky's personal secretary.
[13]
Ransome provided some information to British officials and the British
Secret Intelligence Service
, which gave him the code name S.76 in their files.
[14]
Bruce Lockhart
said in his memoirs: "Ransome was a
Don Quixote
with a walrus moustache, a sentimentalist who could always be relied upon to champion the underdog, and a visionary whose imagination had been fired by the revolution. He was on excellent terms with the Bolsheviks and frequently brought us information of the greatest value."
[15]
Nonetheless, in March 1919, on one of his return visits to the United Kingdom, the authorities interviewed him and threatened him with exposure as an agent.
[16]
In October 1919, Ransome met
Reginald Leeper
of the Foreign Office's
Political Intelligence Department
, who required Ransome privately to submit his articles and public speaking engagements for approval. Ransome's response was "indignant". Unbeknown to Leeper, Ransome's "near treason[ous]" articles were written to buttress his exceptional access to the Bolshevik leadership.
[14]
[17]
MI5
, the British Security Service, was suspicious that Ransome and his fellow journalist,
M. Philips Price
, were a threat because of their opposition to the
Allied Intervention in the Russian Civil War
.
[15]
In October 1919, as Ransome was returning to Moscow on behalf of
The Manchester Guardian
, the
Estonian foreign minister
Ants Piip
entrusted him to deliver a secret armistice proposal to the Bolsheviks. At that time, the Estonians were fighting
their War of Independence
alongside the
White movement
of counter-revolutionary forces. After crossing the battle lines on foot, Ransome passed the message, which, to preserve secrecy, had not been written down and depended for its authority only on the high personal regard in which he was held in both countries, to diplomat
Maxim Litvinov
in Moscow. To deliver the reply, which accepted Piip's conditions for peace, Ransome had to return by the same risky means, but now, he had Evgenia with him. Estonia withdrew from the conflict, and Ransome and Evgenia set up home together in the capital
Tallinn
.
[18]
After the Allied intervention, Ransome remained in the Baltic states and built a cruising yacht,
Racundra
. He wrote a successful book about his experiences,
Racundra's First Cruise
. He joined the staff of
The Manchester Guardian
when he returned to Russia and the Baltic states. Following his divorce, he married Evgenia and brought her to live in England, where he continued writing for
The Guardian
, often on foreign affairs, and also writing the "
Country Diary
" column on fishing. On the Ransomes' return to England,
Racundra
was sold to the yachting author
Kaines Adlard Coles
, who sailed her back to England.
Swallows and Amazons
series
[
edit
]
By the late 1920s, Ransome had settled in the
Lake District
because he had decided not to accept a position as a full-time foreign correspondent with
The Guardian
newspaper. Instead he wrote
Swallows and Amazons
in 1929 ? the first of the series that made his reputation as one of the best
[19]
[20]
English writers of children's books.
Ransome apparently based the Walker children (the "Swallows") in the book partly on the Altounyan family. He had a long-standing friendship with the mother of the Altounyans, and their
Collingwood
grandparents. Later, he denied the connection, claiming he simply gave the Altounyans' names to his own characters; it appears to have upset him that people did not regard the characters as original creations. Letters
[21]
also indicate that conflict arose between Ransome and the family.
Ransome's writing is noted for his detailed descriptions of activities. Although he used many actual features from the Lake District landscape, he invented his own geography, mixing descriptions of different places to create his own juxtapositions. His move to
East Anglia
brought a change of location for four of the books, and Ransome started using the real landscape and geography of East Anglia, so that one can use the maps printed in the books as a guide to the real area. Ransome's own interest in sailing and his need to provide an accurate description caused him to undertake a voyage across the North Sea to
Flushing
in the Netherlands. His book
We Didn't Mean To Go To Sea
reflects that, and he based the fictional
Goblin
on his own boat
Nancy Blackett
(which in turn took its name from a
character in the series
).
Two or three of the
Swallows and Amazons
books have less realistic plots. The original concept of
Peter Duck
was a story made up by the children themselves, and Peter Duck had appeared in the preceding volume,
Swallowdale
, as a character whom the children created, but Ransome dropped the foreword of explanation from
Peter Duck
before it was published. Although relatively straightforward, the story, together with its equally unrealistic ostensible sequel
Missee Lee
,
[22]
is much more fantastic than the rest of the series. A trip to China as a foreign correspondent provided Ransome with the imaginative springboard for
Missee Lee
, in which readers find the Swallows and the Amazons sailing around the world in the
schooner
Wild Cat
from
Peter Duck
. Together with Captain Flint (the Amazons' uncle Jim Turner), they become the captives of Chinese pirates.
Peter Duck
was illustrated by Ransome himself using pen and ink, although the frontispiece claims that the book is "Based on information supplied by the Swallows and Amazons and illustrated mainly by Themselves." Ransome then continued to illustrate the stories, and provided illustrations for new editions of the first two books of the series as of 1938, replacing images by
Clifford Webb
(whose illustrations for
Swallows and Amazons
had themselves replaced
Steven Spurrier's
first edition drawings. Ransome had disliked Spurrier's images and only the maps drawn by Spurrier were retained for the end paper and dust jacket).
[23]
The final book of the series,
Great Northern?
(1947) was set in Scotland, and while the plot and action appear realistic, the internal chronology does not fit the usual run of school holiday adventures. Myles North, an admirer of Ransome, provided much of the basic plot of the book.
Swallows and Amazons
was so popular that it inspired a number of other authors to write in a similar vein. Most notably, two schoolchildren, Pamela Whitlock and Katharine Hull, wrote
The Far-Distant Oxus
, an adventure story set on
Exmoor
. Whitlock sent the manuscript to Ransome in March 1937, and he persuaded his publisher,
Jonathan Cape
, to produce it, characterising it as "the best children's book of 1937".
[24]
Sailing
[
edit
]
After the sale of
Racundra
in 1925 (in Coles' ownership she became
Annette II
), Ransome went on (in addition to the occasional charter, loan or trial sail) to own five further cruising yachts. His next yacht was the Hillyard-built
Nancy Blackett
, which he owned from 1935 to 1938. She was originally named
Spindrift
when launched in 1931.
[25]
After this came
Selina King
, a 35 ft 12 ton cutter with a canoe stern, designed by
Frederick Shepherd
and built at Harry Kings Yard in
Pin Mill
in 1938.
[26]
She was laid up during the war and (on medical advice) they sold her in 1946.
[25]
After the war, he commissioned a ketch from
Laurent Giles
, again built in Pin Mill by Harry King:
Peter Duck
. He owned her from 1947 to 1949; her design was the basis for a class of which over 40 were built.
[25]
[27]
In July, 1951, he saw
Norvad
, a Hillyard five-and-a-half ton centre-cockpit yacht. With Evgenia, he had a trial sail in
Norvad
the following month in a hard offshore wind. They decided to get one, which he had decided should bear the name
Lottie Blossom
, and put in an order for that year's Boat Show model. With a list of things they wanted done to modify the boat below decks from the standard production model, the boat was launched on 1 April 1952. Ransome's health problems delayed their first sail to 15 April.
[25]
[28]
In December 1952, he sold
Lottie Blossom
to
Sir William Paul Mallinson
on condition that he (Ransome) retained the name.
[25]
Lottie Blossom II
followed early the next year, using the same design of hull, but with aft cockpit and tiller steering. They had two very happy seasons in her, sailing her comfortably on their own, including two voyages to
Cherbourg
. The second voyage, in 1954, at the age of 70, was to be Ransome's last long passage.
[25]
[28]
Personal life
[
edit
]
Ransome married twice, first to Ivy Constance Walker in 1909, with whom he had a daughter, Tabitha Ransome; the couple divorced in 1924. His second marriage, that same year, was to Evgenia Petrovna Shelepina. Although MI5 appeared satisfied with Ransome's loyalty to Britain by 1937,
KGB
files that were opened following the
end of the Soviet Union
suggest that Evgenia Ransome, at least, was involved in smuggling diamonds from the USSR to Paris to help fund the
Comintern
. This is examined in the 2009 book
The Last Englishman: the Double Life of Arthur Ransome
by Roland Chambers.
[29]
Ransome and his second wife are buried in the same grave.
Death
[
edit
]
Ransome died in
Cheadle Royal Hospital
on 3 June 1967. He and his wife Evgenia are buried in the churchyard of St Paul's Church,
Rusland, Cumbria
, in the southern Lake District.
[30]
The
Autobiography of Arthur Ransome
, edited by
Rupert Hart-Davis
, was published posthumously in 1976. It covers his life only to the completion of
Peter Duck
in 1931.
Awards and accolades
[
edit
]
Ransome won the inaugural
Carnegie Medal
from the
Library Association
, recognising
Pigeon Post
in the Swallows and Amazons series as the year's best children's book by a
British subject
.
[31]
He was appointed
CBE
in 1953.
[32]
Durham University
made him an honorary
Master of Arts
(which he told Cape to ignore) and
Leeds University
made him an honorary
Doctor of Letters
in 1952.
[33]
Translations of his books have been published in several languages and he became popular in many countries. Thriving Ransome appreciation societies exist in the
Czech Republic
, and in Japan where the
Arthur Ransome Club
was founded in 1987. Czech astronomer
Antonin Mrkos
named an
asteroid
after the author (
6440 Ransome
).
The Arthur Ransome Society
founded in 1990 in the U.K. now has a worldwide membership.
[34]
Works
[
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]
"Swallows and Amazons" series
[
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]
Published posthumously
[
edit
]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
Edwards, John H,
Edward Baker Boulton: Australia's Forgotten Artist
, Norrong Press, Sydney, 2004
ISBN
0-9752129-0-7
- ^
Hyland, Peter.
"A Brief Biography of Arthur Ransome"
. All Things Ransome
. Retrieved
18 December
2017
.
- ^
Chambers (2009) pp 11?12
- ^
"Arthur Ransome ? double agent?"
.
BBC Local: Leeds
. Leeds, England: BBC News. 1 December 2009
. Retrieved
28 March
2010
.
- ^
Nature Books for Children
PDFs
- ^
Brogan (1984), pp 84; 281
- ^
Brogan (1984), p 90
- ^
The Edinburgh Gazette Publication date:17 January 1913 Issue: 12530, Page 77
- ^
Ransome, Arthur,
Oscar Wilde ? A Critical Study
, 2nd edition, Methuen, 1913
- ^
Chambers (2009) p 69
- ^
Brogan (1984), pp 77; 84
- ^
Lovelock, Julian (2016).
Swallows, Amazons and Coots : a reading of Arthur Ransome
. Cambridge, United Kingdom:
Lutterworth
. p. 153.
ISBN
9780718894368
.
- ^
Brogan (1984), p 153
- ^
a
b
Smith, Michael
(24 May 2011). "15".
The Real James Bonds 1909-1939
.
ISBN
9781906447007
.
Many of his articles were written in order that he would not be compromised with the Bolshevik leaders.
- ^
a
b
Pallister, David
(1 March 2005).
"Still an enigma, our Petrograd correspondent"
.
The Guardian
. London
. Retrieved
12 January
2010
.
- ^
Brogan (1984), p 235
- ^
Kettle, Michael (1992).
Churchill and the Archangel Fiasco: November 1918 ? July 1919
. London: Routledge. pp.
225
?228.
ISBN
0-415-08286-2
.
- ^
Brogan (1984), pp 242?248
- ^
Strong, Leonard
(1953). "Serials: Books for the young reader".
The Writer's Trade
. London: Methuen. p. 133.
OCLC
503823758
.
- ^
Quoted from
Walpole, Hugh
(1934).
British Books
. Vol. 139. p. 248.
- ^
"Swallows and Armenians: Arthur Ransome's forgotten inspirations revealed"
.
The Guardian
. 9 March 2019
. Retrieved
6 June
2021
.
- ^
Wardale (1991:170)
- ^
Hunt, Peter (1992).
Approaching Arthur Ransome
(Rev. text ed.). London: Jonathan Cape. p. 62.
ISBN
0-224-03288-7
.
OCLC
26301483
.
- ^
Brogan (1984), 353.
- ^
a
b
c
d
e
f
Ted Evans article "On AR and Hillyards" at ted.evans.uwclub.net
- ^
Selina King
at classicyachtinfo.com
- ^
Article about
Peter Duck
at classicboat.co.uk
- ^
a
b
"Article about
Lottie Blossom
at Chichester Harbour Conservancy conservancy.co.uk"
(PDF)
. Archived from
the original
(PDF)
on 13 August 2016
. Retrieved
30 April
2016
.
- ^
Chambers (2009) p 292
- ^
Brogan (1984), pp. 433?434
- ^
Carnegie Winner 1936
. Living Archive: Celebrating the Carnegie and Greenaway Winners.
CILIP
. Retrieved 23 July 2012.
- ^
Avery, Gillian
(2004). "Ransome, Arthur Michell (1884?1967)".
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
- ^
Arthur Ransome (1884?1967)
, University of Leeds Library
- ^
The Arthur Ransome Society
Archived
3 September 2018 at the
Wayback Machine
, Alliance of Literary Societies, May 2017
- ^
Ransome, Arthur (16 April 2002).
Racundra's Third Cruise
.
ISBN
9781898660897
.
Further reading
[
edit
]
- The Autobiography of Arthur Ransome
, edited by Rupert Hart-Davis, Jonathan Cape, 1976
- The Life of Arthur Ransome
, by Hugh Brogan, Jonathan Cape, 1984
- Arthur Ransome and Captain Flint's Trunk
, by
Christina Hardyment
, Jonathan Cape, 1984
- Nancy Blackett: Under Sail with Arthur Ransome
, by Roger Wardale, Jonathan Cape, 1991,
ISBN
0-224-02773-5
- Signalling from Mars, The Letters of Arthur Ransome
, edited by Hugh Brogan, Jonathan Cape, 1997
- Blood Red Snow White
, by Marcus Sedgwick, Orion Children's Books, 2007 ? historical fiction about Ransome in Russia during the revolution
- The Last Englishman: the Double Life of Arthur Ransome
, by Roland Chambers, Faber & Faber, 2009,
ISBN
0-571-22261-7
- The World of Arthur Ransome
, by Christina Hardyment, Frances Lincoln, 2012 (
ISBN
9780711232976
)
- Russian Roulette: How British Spies Thwarted Lenin's Global Plot
by
Giles Milton
, Sceptre, 2013.
ISBN
978 1 444 73702 8
External links
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]
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