Comprising: Swallows and Amazons, Swallowdale, Peter Duck, Winter Holiday, Coot Club, Pigeon Post, We Didn't Mean to Go to Sea, Secret Water, The Big Six, Missee Lee, The Picts and the Martyrs, Great Northern.
THE COMPLETE SET IN REMARKABLE CONDITION
The Swallows and Amazons Books Comprising: Swallows and Amazons, Swallowdale, Peter Duck, Winter Holiday, Coot Club, Pigeon Post, We Didn't Mean to Go to Sea, Secret Water, The Big Six, Missee Lee, The Picts and the Martyrs, Great Northern.
Cape, 1930.
Twelve volumes, all first editions. Original cloth in pictorial dustwrappers. Secret Water is signed by the author on the half title. Woodcut illustrations in the text by Stephen Spurrier, Clifford Webb and the author. An exceptionally nice set, for the most part in near fine condition. The first two volumes, by some way the rarest of the series, are both exceptional. Some of the other volumes show a little light wear to the corners or spine ends, but overall a most attractive and unusually well preserved set.
The complete Swallows and Amazons series.
Inspired by childhood memories and a summer in 1928 spent teaching the children of some friends to sail on Lake Coniston, Ransome later said about the series' creation, "Swallows and Amazons grew out of the old memories. I could not help writing it. It almost wrote itself" (Author's Note to the 1958 edition of Swallows and Amazons)
Over twenty years Ransome created one of the most popular and best loved series of children's books of the twentieth century which "... changed British 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". (Peter Hunt - Approaching Arthur Ransome)
Their popularity meant that, like many children's books of the period, they were read heavily, so copies of the early books with their dustwrapper in nice condition are seldom encountered and much sought. It is rare to encounter a complete set in such uniformly good condition.
Stock ID: 39475
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