Today we skipped off work for the afternoon to go to the Armitt Museum in Ambleside. I had booked tickets for a talk by Dr Penny Bradshaw about children's literature and the Lake District.
Penny's talk explored the development of children's literature and, in particular, the "holiday adventure" genre within the context of the Lake District. Also, the importance of the early texts for children and the way in which they help us perceive the region to be an evolving "cultural landscape".
Penny spoke about the way the "holiday adventure" has evolved out of the writing of Wordsworth and other contemporary poets and writers. Wordsworth's posthumously published poem The Prelude is, in many ways, the forerunner to the adventure and holiday novels. Subtitled The Growth of the Poet's Mind the poem includes all the elements of the later fiction: boating, swimming, exploring, walking and fishing.
Penny discussed four novels spanning the last 150 years to illustrate the beginnings and development of the "holiday adventure" genre: Mrs Humphry Ward's Milly and Olly; Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons; Geoffrey Trease's No Boats on Bannemere and Spylark by Danny Rurlander.
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| Mrs Humphry Ward Milly and Olly |
Ransome's Swallows and Amazons, and his subsequent novels, provide an imaginative space for children where they can follow the same activities and experiences as the Walkers and the Blacketts, and later the Two Ds. The endpaper maps reinforce that the books take place in real places, which can be visited and enjoyed.
Ransome's novels fit well into the space that Norman Nicholson called the "interwar years and the cult of the athletic" (The Lakers). This period saw the the rapid growth of the Youth Hostel Association, the Ramblers' Association and the Scouts. Nicholson postulated that there had been two previous attempts for the post-industrial revolution country to reconnect with nature: the Picturesque and the Romantic Movement.
Finally, for me, I enjoyed Penny's thoughts about Geoffrey Trease's Bannerdale series. I absolutely love Trease's books, especially the very real descriptions of locations which are instantly recognised as Wasdale, Eskdale and Cockermouth, although the location names are changed.
I first read Trease's Bannerdale books when I was in my teens, after we had moved up to the Lakes. So my experience of the area was very similar to the fictional children of the novels. The Melbury and Morchard siblings lived near Cockermouth and were at school in the area, just like I was when I read the books. This creates a very different story from the holiday adventure story, and makes the books even more realistic. They are novels I have returned to as an adult.
I thoroughly enjoyed our sneaky afternoon off work, revelling in the pleasures of children's books and the Lake District.