RANSOME, Arthur.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Swallows and Amazons. First edition. There were 2,000 copies in the first printing. This is the first instalment in the series that "changed British children's literature, affected a whole generation's view of holidays, helped to create the national image of the English Lake District, and added Arthur Ransome's name to the select list of classic British children's authors" (Hunt, p. 13).Cape commissioned Steven Spurrier for the illustrations, but Ransome disliked his drawings and only Spurrier's designs for the jacket, endpapers, frontispiece, and title page vignette were used."Swallows and Amazons sold slowly at first, taking two years to earn its advance of £100, but eventually its sales at home and abroad, and the sales of its sequels, repaid Cape's investment many times over. The Autumn 1948 number of Now & Then, the house journal of Jonathan Cape, announced that the one millionth copy, of the total copies printed of the twelve books in the 'Swallows and Amazons' series, would soon be on sale" (Hammond).The first film adaptation of Swallows and Amazons was released in 1974 including Virginia McKenna in the cast. A second adaptation was released in 2016 starring Andrew Scott and Harry Enfield. A musical version of the book was premiered by the National Theatre in 2010.

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