Arthur Ransome

Arthur Michell Ransome was an English author and journalist. He is best known for writing 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. Many of the books involve sailing; fishing and camping are other common subjects. The books remain popular 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.

Arthur was the son of Cyril Ransome (1851-1897) and his wife Edith née Boulton (c1852-1944). Arthur was the eldest of four children: two sisters Cicely and Joyce and a brother Geoffrey who was killed in the First World War in 1918.

Arthur was born in Leeds; the house at 6 Ash Grove, in the Hyde Park area and has a blue plaque beside the door commemorating his birthplace. Ransome's father was professor of history at Yorkshire College, Leeds; 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 Edith 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 wife Evgenia hated it; Genia 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 attended Yorkshire College, his father's college, studying chemistry. After a year, he abandoned the college 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 writing and becoming a member of the literary scene of London.

Ransome died in 1967 in a Greater Manchester hospital. He and his wife Evgenia lie buried in the churchyard of St Paul's Church, Rusland, Cumbria, in the southern Lake District. 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.