Beatrix Potter, creator of Peter Rabbit

Beatrix Potter, who is best known as the creator of Peter Rabbit, was born on 28^th July 1866, in London. Her father was a lawyer who later inherited a large amount of money. Beatrix was christened Helen Beatrix, but, because Helen was her mother’s name, she used the name Beatrix throughout her life.

Beatrix had a lonely childhood, often visited by poor health. She filled much of her time with painting and drawing. During visits to Scotland and her grandfather’s house in Hertfordshire, Beatrix and her younger brother became fascinated with animals and birds, which Beatrix in particular learned to record on paper.

When she was 16 she paid her first visit to the Lake District of North-West England, and her interests extended to fossils and fungi. Indeed, she became something of an expert on the latter subject, having a paper read at the Linnean Society of London in 1897.

When in the Lakes, Beatrix wrote letters to the children of her former governess, illustrated with pictures of animals, and those animals became the subjects of simple little stories. It was in one of these letters, written in 1893, that Peter Rabbit made his first appearance. Beatrix made efforts to get the story published, but she eventually had to do this herself, producing an edition of 250 copies of The Tale of Peter Rabbit in December 1901, which had most of the illustrations printed in black and white. She did the same with The Tailor of Gloucester.

The breakthrough came when Frederick Warne and Co., and particularly Frederick’s son Norman, approached Beatrix with an offer to publish Peter Rabbit if she could produce colour illustrations. This was very much a speculative bid by Warne, but it proved to be spectacularly successful, with a total of nineteen stories being published by 1913 (there are 23 titles in the complete series). The Warne imprint (although the firm is now a part of Penguin Books) continues to publish the series to this day.

The close association between Beatrix and Norman Warne led eventually to an engagement in 1905, when she was 39, but Norman was already seriously ill with leukaemia and he died only four weeks later.

The royalties from the first few published stories were enough to allow Beatrix to buy a Lake District farm, Hill Top, where she spent as much time as she could, although she was still caring for her elderly parents in London.

In October 1913, at the age of 47, Beatrix married her solicitor, William Heelis, although she continued to write under the name Beatrix Potter.

In later life her main interest became farming, and she built a substantial landholding by acquiring farms as they came on to the market, always with a view to maintaining them as working ventures that preserved traditional ways of farming as much as possible. This included the preservation of breeds of sheep that might otherwise have disappeared, particularly the Herdwick strain.

She worked very closely with the National Trust, alerting them to properties and tracts of land that they might be interested in acquiring, and working tirelessly to raise the funds with which this could be done. For example, in 1930 she bought a 5000 acre estate on condition that the Trust bought half of it from her as soon as they had the funds. Much of the unspoilt beauty of the Lake District that tourists and walkers enjoy today is directly due to Beatrix Potter’s efforts.

Beatrix Potter died on 22^nd December 1943, of a heart attack, at the age of 77. Her substantial landholdings were left in her will to the National Trust, with the condition that only Herdwick sheep were to be allowed on the farms. However, it is the abiding charm of Peter Rabbit and his colleagues, whose exploits have been translated into thirteen languages, for which the name of Beatrix Potter will be best remembered.

© John Welford

C S Lewis, creator of "Narnia"

Clive Staples Lewis was born on 29th November 1898, in Belfast, Northern Ireland. His father was a local solicitor. His mother died when he was nine and he was sent away to school immediately afterwards. After attending several preparatory schools he went to Malvern College where he became interested in Norse and Celtic literature. He also had private tuition that helped him to develop his critical skills to a high degree.

World War I interfered with his academic career and a period in the trenches, ending with convalescence from a war wound, preceded his arrival at Oxford, to read classics, in 1919. To honour a pledge made to a fellow soldier named Paddy Moore, who did not survive the war, Lewis offered to support his mother, which he did by moving into her Oxford house where he lived with the mother and her daughter. Lewis lived there, and in another house when the Moores moved in 1930, until his own death.

At Oxford University Lewis achieved first-class degrees in both classics and English language and literature, and was eventually (in 1925) offered a fellowship and tutorship in English at Magdalen College. He continued to teach at Oxford for 30 years.

His religious views developed from agnosticism to Christianity, especially after a mystical experience of some kind in 1929. His account of this conversion appeared as “The Pilgrim’s Regress” in 1933.

A group of friends met regularly in his rooms from 1936 to 1939. Calling themselves the “Inklings” they included J R R Tolkien, whom Lewis encouraged to complete “The Lord of the Rings”.

Lewis wrote at first for an academic readership, notable titles being “The Allegory of Love” (1936) which explored the medieval concept of courtly love, and “A Preface to ‘Paradise Lost’” (1942). However, with “The Screwtape Letters” (1940) he appealed to a wider audience. This is a series of imaginary letters between a senior and a junior devil, with the former explaining the best ways to corrupt human beings and cause them to fall into sin. Lewis also broadcast regularly on the BBC, and these talks were highly popular.

“Out of the Silent Planet” (1938) was the first of a trilogy of allegorical science fiction novels which had a strong Christian flavour. The other two were “Perelandra” (1943) and “That Hideous Strength” (1945).

Lewis’s academic career took an unexpected turn in the 1940s and 50s. He had hoped for a chair (professorship) at Oxford, but his evangelical views were probably what held him back. However, in 1954 the chair in English medieval and Renaissance literature at Magdalene College, Cambridge, came up, and Lewis was persuaded to accept it. However, he still retained his Oxford links.

Lewis will always be best remembered for the series of seven children’s books that began with “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” in 1950 and culminated with “The Last Battle” in 1956. Lewis’s intention was to write the Christian story of sacrifice, resurrection, evangelism and final judgment in a way that children would accept, and he was clearly successful in this aim. The stories can be read simply as adventures, in the age-old tradition of good overcoming evil, without making any demands on a child’s religious susceptibilities. However, some writers, such as Philip Pullman, have found the Christian allegory to be too pervasive, and Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” is a deliberate counterblast, from an atheist perspective, to Lewis’s tales of Narnia.

C S Lewis’s name came to public notice for another reason many years after his death, namely the stage and film drama “Shadowlands”, the best-known version being the film starring Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger (1993). This concerns the relationship between Lewis and Joy Gresham, an American writer, that coincided with the “Narnia” years. Mrs Gresham came to England in 1950 to escape a failed marriage and an alcoholic husband, and she and Lewis became friends. On her divorce, Lewis was happy to arrange a marriage of convenience so that she and her children would not be deported.

However, Lewis fell genuinely in love with her and was devastated when she died of cancer in 1960. The affair, and his sense of loss, were chronicled in “A Grief Observed” (1961).

Lewis did not outlive Joy Gresham by many years. He died in Oxford on 22nd November 1963, a week short of what would have been his 65th birthday. 

© John Welford

Arthur Ransome, creator of "Swallows and Amazons"

Arthur Ransome is renowned for his series of children’s novels written between 1929 and 1947, probably the best known of which is his first, “Swallows and Amazons”. However, his life story was also something of a mystery adventure, but of a very different kind from that depicted in his novels.

His early life

Arthur Michell Ransome was born in Leeds on 18^th January 1884. His father, who died when Arthur was 13, was professor of history at the Yorkshire College, which would become Leeds University in 1904. Arthur was the eldest child of the family of two boys and two girls.

He was educated at Old College, Windermere (thus giving him an early acquaintance with the Lake District) and Rugby School, but he did not shine academically. He was determined to become a writer, and at the age of 17 headed for London where he got a job with a publishing firm.

For the next twelve years he gained a living of sorts from writing articles, reviews and stories and mixed with a number of literary figures including Lascelles Abercrombie and Edward Thomas. When he could afford the train fare he took himself off to the Lake District, which was where he felt most fulfilled. He got to know the Collingwood family and enjoyed camping and sailing with them. He hoped to marry one of the Collingwood daughters, but this was not to be.

Instead, he married Ivy Constance Walker on 13^th March 1909. This proved to be a mistake, and it was partly to escape from this unhappy marriage that he journeyed to Russia in 1913. Another reason was that he had become involved in a libel suit brought by Lord Alfred Douglas in respect of Ransome’s book “Oscar Wilde: A Critical Study” (Douglas had been the lover of Oscar Wilde and the cause of Wilde’s own trial and disgrace). Although Ransome won the case, the experience had disturbed him and he preferred to try his luck elsewhere.

In Russia

He had the idea that he could use Russian folk tales as the basis for stories of his own, and, once in Russia, he set about learning the language and collecting folklore. The result was “Old Peter’s Russian Tales”, published in 1915. In the meantime he accepted a post as correspondent in Petrograd (St Petersburg) for the Daily News, and he settled in Russia until 1919, only making occasional visits back to London.

These were tumultuous years for Russia as the Bolshevik Revolution overthrew the Tsar and Lenin established the world’s first Communist government. The view from London was that Ransome was becoming a Bolshevik himself, writing in complimentary terms about Lenin and opposing foreign interference. However, it has since emerged (as late as 2002) that Ransome was in fact being paid by MI6 to infiltrate the Russian government and send reports back to his London masters, who were seeking means to defeat the revolution.

While in Russia, Ransome met Yevgeniya Petrovna Shelepina, who had been Trotsky’s secretary, and he married her in 1924 when his first marriage was dissolved.

In 1919 he ended his connection with the Daily News but was recruited by the Manchester Guardian instead. Based in Estonia, he reported for ten years on events in Russia and also indulged his passions for fishing and sailing. C P Scott, editor of the Manchester Guardian, later sent him to Egypt and China, but Ransome eventually tired of this work and returned to Britain with a desire to start writing on his own account.

The Lake District and writing

He bought a cottage near Lake Windermere and renewed his friendship with the Collingwood family, who had now produced a new generation with whom he spent much of the summer of 1928, teaching the four children of Dora Collingwood (now Altounyan) to sail in their dinghy, named “Swallow”. 

In March 1929 he started writing “Swallows and Amazons” which was published the following year. Sales were slow, as they were for his second book starring the same characters, “Swallowdale”. However, the third novel, “Peter Duck” (1932) was very well received and Ransome’s name was made. He illustrated this book himself, and did so for the remaining nine novels.

New characters and locations were introduced, such as the Norfolk Broads (“Coot Club”) and the Outer Hebrides (“Great Northern?”). His 1941 novel “Missee Lee” takes the original Swallows and Amazons (the two families named after their boats) to China.

The themes of sailing and birdwatching predominate in his books, but there is less mention of his third great passion, which was fishing. This was left mainly to his “Country Diary” column in the Guardian.

Although the final novel in the series (“Great Northern?”) was published in 1947, Arthur Ransome had planned another, which was left unfinished at his death in 1967.  It was published, as “Coots in the North” in 1988 in its incomplete state, together with some short stories that had also been found among his papers.

His last completed published work was “Mainly About Fishing”, produced in 1959. He died in Manchester on 3^rd June 1967, at the age of 83.

His legacy

Although Arthur Ransome will always be remembered as a friendly, easy-going man with a florid complexion and a huge handlebar moustache, who got on well with everyone especially children, there are still questions about what he was actually doing during those years before the “Swallows and Amazons” novels were written. There is a suggestion, for example, that he and his Russian wife were engaged in diamond smuggling between Russia and Paris, with the proceeds going to Stalin’s Soviet Union. Those sailing trips from Estonia may not just have been for recreational purposes.

Even if Arthur Ransome did lead a double life, the stories he left behind him cement his reputation as one of the great writers for children. The books tend to be lengthy for children’s novels, but they hold the attention well and are excellently crafted and written. Despite being up to 80 years old they have not dated as much as might be expected. After all, sailing dinghies still work the same way, birds still fly, and places like the Lake District and the Norfolk Broads are as beautiful and mysterious as they always were.

© John Welford