Many places in the books can be identified with real locations in the area, though Ransome has modified the real location in producing his fictional setting. The lake and the surrounding fells are based on an amalgam of Windermere and Coniston Water, places where Ransome spent much of his childhood and later life. Most of the unfinished Coots in the North would also have been set on the lake had Ransome completed it before his death. The original Swallows and Amazons and four later books in the series are set in and around an unnamed lake in the English Lake District. This feature contributes so strongly to the air of absolute authenticity of the series that some readers may be upset to find that occasional minor items did not actually exist in precisely the form that they are described! Extensive elements of both the characters and settings can be traced back to incidents in Ransome's life and are the raw material for much discussion and theorising about precise relationships. The Swallows and Amazons series is of particular interest because of its close association with reality.
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