In the first critical book devoted wholly to the series, Julian Lovelock explores each novel in turn, offering an erudite assessment of Ransome's creative process and narrative technique, and highlighting his contradictory politics, his defence of rural England, and his reflections on colonialism and the place of women in society.
Yet Swallows, Amazons and Coots shows that, to be properly appreciated today, the novels must be read as products of their era, inextricably bound up with Ransome's life and times as he bore witness to the end of Empire and the dark days of the Second World War. In them, Ransome creates a world of escape so close to reality that it is utterly believable, a world in which things always turn out right in the end. They changed the course of children's literature and have never been out of print since. The result was Swallows and Amazons and eleven more wonderful books followed, spanning inpublication the turbulent years from 1930 to 1947.
In 1929, Arthur Ransome (1884-1967), a journalist and war correspondent who was on the books of MI6, turned his hand to writing adventure stories for children. Ransome's Swallows and Amazons Novels (In order of first publication) Note: All references in Swallows, Amazons and Coots are to Random House 'Red Fox'editions, 2001 Swallows and Amazons (London: Jonathan Cape, 1930.
0 kommentar(er)
