Swallows and Amazons
These books are the coziest I know, and always good to read and reread.
They are nominally children’s books, but they’re perhaps even more enjoyable for adults. They’re a series of 12 books by Arthur Ransome written in the 1930s and 1940s. I think they are far better known in the UK than the US.
The Swallow and the Amazon are two small sailing boats used by two sets of children, sailing on an 8-mile-long lake with islands, in the Lake District in northern England. Arthur Ransome was a highly experienced sailor, and almost all the books revolve around the sailing of small boats.
These days, children aged 7-12 would certainly not be allowed to go sailing and camping on an island for two weeks by themselves, as happens in the first book, but there are always caring adults in the background keeping an eye on them.
There are also strong female characters. Nancy Blackett is better at sailing and most other outdoor activities than any of the boys, as well as being a natural leader. She and her sister prefer to wear shorts rather than dresses - unusual in the 1930s.
The books are very gentle but lively, with a lot of quiet humour. The children are very real - the most real children I’ve ever come across in fiction - and mostly based on actual children that Ransome knew. They also grow and change over the course of the series.
Unlike most series of books, the Swallows and Amazons series gets better and better as it goes on, and the quality of the writing gets smoother and more skillful. In fact, the writing is so good that it seems effortless. You don’t even notice how expertly written it is unless you intentionally look for it. The books don’t follow any set pattern, and each book has its own unique flavour and charm.
Like all great children’s writers, Ransome never lost the ability to see the world through the eyes of a child.
The refreshing thing about the Swallows and Amazons series is that the author is not trying to push any point of view. There is no ‘message’, there are no little moral lessons. The characters don’t have to resolve personal differences among themselves and ‘become better people’. There are hardly any villains or bad guys. Nothing very implausible happens.
I find them endlessly re-readable - comfort reading of the best and most enjoyable kind.
Here’s Arthur Ransome’s note about how he came to write the books:
“I have often been asked how I came to write Swallows and Amazons. The answer is that it had its beginning long, long ago when, as children, my brother, my sisters and I spent most of our holidays on a farm at the south end of Coniston. We played in or on the lake or on the hills above it, finding friends in the farmers and shepherds and charcoal-burners whose smoke rose from the coppice woods along the shore.
We adored the place. Coming to it, we used to run down to the lake, dip our hands in and wish, as if we had just seen the new moon. Going away from it, we were half drowned in tears. While away from it, as children and as grown-ups, we dreamt about it. No matter where I was, wandering about the world, I used at night to look for the North Star and, in my mind’s eye, could see the beloved skyline of great hills beneath it.
Swallows and Amazons grew out of those old memories. I could not help writing it. It almost wrote itself.”
— A.R., Haverthwaite, May 19th, 1958