ABSTRACT
I have never found ‘realism’ to be a very helpful term; it muddies the waters of critical discussion and it always comes as a surprise to me when I hear Ransome described as a realistic writer – or criticised for not being realistic enough. I regard him as essentially a magical writer. He is realistic only in the sense that he is a great describer, a painter of word-pictures, with an extraordinary commitment to the faithful representation of the workaday realities of boating or camping. I want in these first chapters to show how this surface authenticity works to sustain an altogether magical representation of childhood and landscape. Ransome’s creative enterprise is not to represent landscape and childhood as they are but as they may be imaginatively transformed within what is ultimately a Wordsworthian vision. And I hope to show that, while The Prelude celebrated the privileged perceptions of a solitary male boy, Ransome was altogether more generous in allowing into his stories many different approved ways of responding to the experiences of childhood.
