Arthur Ransome
This section is devoted to the man, his books and his life
Arthur Mitchell Ransome was born in Leeds in 1884 and educated in Windermere and Rugby. His family spent their summers at Nibthwaite, to the south of Coniston Water.
In 1902, Ransome abandoned a chemistry degree to become a publisher's office boy in London. He used this precarious existence to practise writing, producing several minor works before Bohemia in London (1907), a study of London's artistic scene and his first significant book.
An interest in folklore, together with a desire to escape an unhappy first marriage, led Ransome to St Petersburg, where he was ideally placed to observe and report on the Russian Revolution. He knew many of the leading Bolsheviks, including Lenin, Radek, Trotsky and the latter's secretary, Evgenia Shvelpina. These contacts led to persistent but unproven accusations that he "spied" for both the Bolsheviks and Britain.
Ransome married Evgenia and returned to England in 1924. Settling in the Lake District, he spent the late 1920s as a foreign correspondent and highly-respected angling columnist for the Manchester Guardian, before settling down to write Swallows and Amazons and its successors.
Today Ransome is best known for his Swallows and Amazons series of novels, (1931 - 1947). All remain in print and have been widely translated.
Arthur Ransome died in June 1967 and is buried at Rusland in the Lake District.
For more information, click on one of the links below:
|
Biography |
||||
 |
 |
 |
||
|
The life of Arthur Ransome split into five key stages |
A list of those books which Arthur Ransome wrote or contributed to |
Information on the twelve books in this famous series |
||
 |
 |
 |
||
|
Key dates in Ransome's life, with main publication dates |
Find out more about the man, his books and what inspired them |
Where to start looking for more information |
Signals from TARSUS January 2010 now available
Northern Ireland - how many of us are there?
