Early next week we are going to a talk in Ambleside about Children's Literature set in the Lake District. I'm very intererested to find out what books will be included in the talk.
I have a very large collection of juvenile fiction set in the Lakes and the wider region (the old Westmorland, Lancashire and Cumberland). My collection comprises all the major authors including Arthur Ransome, Beatrix Potter and Geoffrey Trease, but I also have lots of books and series by less well known novels including Elfrida Vipont, Marjorie Lloyd, Elsie J Oxenham and Lorna Hill. I also have quite a few rather obscure authors, by today’s standards. Some of my favourites in this category are Theodora Wilson Wilson, Patricia K Caldwell and Peter Lethbridge.
Many of the authors who write about the Lake District holidayed in the region, grew up here or retired to the Lakes. They all clearly love the scenery and a strong sense of place comes through in all the novels I have read. Many writers are associated more with another county or area. These definitely include Malcom Saville who writes so lyrically about Shropshire; Elsie J Oxenham who used Cleeve Abbey in Somerset as the setting for her Abbey Girl books, and Lorna Hill whose books are normally located in either Northumberland or London (at Sadler's Wells).
There are authors who have surprising links to the Lake District. Angela Brazil and Malcolm Saville are definitely in this category.
“It was dark when they arrived…Later on, however, when the moon rose, and from the windows of the hotel they had a vista of gleaming silver water, and great somber ranges of mountains behind. The next morning was sunny, and the Lake was an expanse of blue in a setting of green woods and purple hills….They took one of the little pleasure steamers that were calling at the jetty and went to Ambleside…”
There’s also a description of Grasmere and Dove Cottage, including the links to the Lake Poets. The tour also takes in Brantwood and Coniston, Derwentwater and Ullswater. St Catherine’s College offers a fascinating insight into a motor tour in the 1920s.
In Malcolm Saville’s Strangers at Snowfell the train, on which the Jillies are travelling to Scotland, can’t get over Shap in the snow. So, the adventure happens in and around the village. This is Saville’s only book set in the old county of Westmorland.
When I first discovered Marjorie Lloyd we lived in Chester, but spent every possible holiday in Hawkshead! So the setting of High Arnside Farm (Fell Farm), close to Tarn Hows was so familiar. We did the same walks as the Browne family and explored the same scenery. They are glorious novels and stand up well to an adult re-reading.
Elfrida Vipont's novels are mostly set in and around Cartmel. She was a lifelong Quaker and lived in Yealand Conyers for much of her life. I've loved her books for a long time, they are gentle and funny. Her descriptions of Cartmel, and the surrounding area, are beautiful and spot on "St Merlyon was a big village with cobbled streets and a cobbled square with a preaching cross in the middle of it. A broad, shallow stream ran through it, and you could lean over the old stone bridge and watch the fish darting to and fro, and hiding in the swaying water-weeds on the pebbly bottom."
I love that there are so many books set in Cumbria, it's such a joy to discover authors writing about familiar places and to see these places through fresh eyes.
I'm really looking forward to Tuesday's talk and wondering if there are any books and authors I haven't read and books that I don't own!