Swallows and Amazons

Swallows and Amazons is set in the picturesque Lake District, a mountainous area in Cumbria in northwest England that has 16 major lakes. The novel’s setting plays a crucial role in shaping the children’s adventures, as the detailed descriptions of the lakes, islands, and countryside provide a vivid backdrop for their imaginative play and exploration.

Although Ransome never refers to the setting as the Lake District, his author’s note states that the book grew out of his memories of childhood holidays on a farm at the south end of Coniston, which gives its name to both a town and a lake called Coniston Water within the Lake District. The note mentions the local people, including farmers, shepherds, and charcoal burners, all of whom are represented as locals in Swallows and Amazons.

Ransome makes further connections between features in the Lake District and those in the novel in a 1955 letter to a reader. According to the letter, the town that the children call “Rio Grande” is Bowness-on-Windemere, while North Country Lake is “mostly” Lake Windermere, with some aspects borrowed from Coniston Water. The mountain that the children call Kanchenjunga is based on the real-life Old Man of Coniston. Holly Howe Farm is based on Bank Ground Farm, and the novel’s secret harbor can be found on Peel Island in Coniston Water. According to one of Ransome’s publishers, Wild Cat Island resembles both Peel Island and Blakeholme in Lake Windermere.

Swallows and Amazons is one of three extremely popular British adventure series for children that flourished in the early to mid-20th century and beyond. These books share several things in common, particularly young characters, including sets of siblings, of varied ages so that children of varied ages might identify closely with at least one character. The books feature adventures that range from extremely realistic—as with most of the Swallows and Amazons books and their concerns with sailing and camping—to the fantastical, with discovery of undersea tunnels.

Swallows and Amazons, the first installment in this series, was published in 1930; the 12th and last book was published in 1947. The author knew that he wanted to write more holiday adventures; he told a friend in 1931 that he wanted to build up a “regular row” of the books. The Swallows and Amazons series expanded to include books about other young characters besides the Walker and Blackett children; after introducing the new characters, Ransome wrote several books that did not involve the original six children. Two are considered metafictional, as they have more of a fantasy element and are supposedly based on wild stories that the Walkers and Blacketts tell, similar to those they tell in Swallows and Amazons.

Enid Blyton’s Adventure series is often compared to Ransome’s, as they involve sets of siblings having exciting adventures while on holiday. Blyton’s eight books published between 1944 and 1955 feature siblings Philip and Dinah Mannering and Jack and Lucy-Ann Trent, who solve mysteries and discover exotic features, such as undersea tunnels and buried cities. Like Ransome’s, Blyton’s young characters are frequently in situations in which adults are largely absent.

A third series, the Lone Pine books by Malcolm Saville, includes 20 books and was published over a 35-year period from 1943 to 1978. The series begins with Mystery at Witchend, which is set in wartime Shropshire, England. In the book, the three children in the Morton family move to the countryside while their father is serving in the war and start the Lone Pine Club with two other friends, a local girl and another evacuee who is a boy. They progress from uncovering enemy spies in the first book to postwar adventures in various parts of England.

The three series differ greatly in their treatment of settings. Saville’s books are very true to their settings in and around England. Ransome’s settings are described in such detail that, like the characters in Swallows and Amazons, children could draw them on a map—yet the settings are a conglomerate of different real places. Blyton, in turn, uses remote settings such as islands and castles as the backdrop for exciting adventures.