Update Log


The intent is for this log to record updates and additions to All Things Ransome as an aid for the maintainers, and also for those who would like to check periodically and see what's new. Please note that maintenance to replace obsolete or broken links or fix errors introduced during the re-implementation will generally not be recorded as "updates" going forward unless an particular change is significant.

27-Jan-2010 A new article on Building a boat 'just like' the Swallow, by Stuart Wier and Andrew Goltz, has been added to the "Arthur Ransome's Boats" section.
23-Dec-2009 The Media Vault section has been added to All Things Ransome. The Media Vault is intended as a repository for links to video and audio clips of or about Arthur Ransome available on the web, or in some cases information about material available elsewhere.
18-Dec-2009 Peter Hyland has updated his Online Subjects and Authors Indices to Mixed Moss, the TARS Publication, current through January 2010. The Indices may be found in the "Guides" section of the Literary Pages.
25-Nov-2009 Three articles by Arthur Ransome have been recovered to the Literary Pages: "The Truth About Russia", "Rod and line: Poachers" and "Famine on the Volga", and the "Hanging Man" game from the original Centreboard Junior TARS website has been added to the Quizzes and games section.
08-Nov-2009 The home page of All Things Ransome has been reorganized alphabetically (for sections on All Things Ransome itself), and divided into categories (such as "Clubs, Groups and Societies") on the links to resources available elsewhere.
08-Nov-2009 The Slide Show and Quizzes sections have been recovered from the old AR site and are once again available. Please bring any broken links or other problems to our attention so they may be fixed.
06-Nov-2009 An article on The Origins of the Northern River Pirates, by Peter Roche, has been added to the Literary Pages section, in "Articles".
28-Oct-2009 A review of The Adventures of Ben Gunn by R.F. Delderfield, a prequel to Treasure Island, was added to the Ransome Readers Recommend section. Reviewed by Claire Barnett.
21-Sep-2009 A review of the Fell Farm books by Marjorie Lloyd was added to the Ransome Readers Recommend section, and that review and the review of Big Tiger and Christian were updated by including the reviews of the books which the reviewer wrote for the TARS Library when donating editions of the books to the Library. Reviews by Dave Thewlis.
18-Sep-2009 The Trivia Section in the Literary Pages has had its index reorganized by the book in which each item appears (thanks to Peter Dowden and the Arthur Ransome Wiki for the idea), and new trivia items have been added from Tom Napier and Peter Dowden.
15-Sep-2009 The new Online Archives section is intended as a place to archive ephemera such as journals and newsletters, to make them available in the future to researchers and other Ransome enthusiasts. The initial contents include the 1994-1995 Signalling to Mars electronic newsletter, and the TARS U.S. Signals from TARSUS newsletter, available online since 1998.
15-Aug-2009 We have implemented a new section, Arthur Ransome's Boats, focused on Arthur Ransome's boats, real and fictional, and on other boats owned by Ransome enthusiasts and continuing in the tradition of the boats Ransome owned and wrote about. This section is inclusive of Stuart Wier's seminal The Boats of Swallows and Amazons, but is intended to be broader in focus and content.
22-Jun-2009 Reviews from several new contributors have been posted to Ransome Readers Recommend. Our thanks to the contributors, from Canada, the U.K., and Australia. As noted, we are actively seeking new contributions from Ransome readers worldwide – send your reviews to Ransome Readers Recommend.
18-Jun-2009 Ransome Readers Recommend is a new section added to All Things Ransome which offers short reviews and recommendations by Ransome readers of books they feel will be enjoyed by other Ransome readers. The reviews are oriented towards (but are not exclusively for) juniors. This section is based on a regular column of the same name in the TARS U.S. newsletter Signals from TARSUS, and most of the initial reviews come from that column. We are actively seeking new contributions from Ransome readers worldwide – send your reviews to Ransome Readers Recommend.
05-May-2009 Martin Hickes' May 4th, 2009 article from the Yorkshire Post about Arthur Ransome, The spy's story...childhood classic makes splash again, has been posted in the Articles section of the Literary Pages.
09-Apr-2009 We have posted a link to the Russian Arthur Ransome site on the All Things Ransome home page. This web site was created by Evgenia Ransome's great-nephew, Gleb Viktorovich Drapkin. The site has much new information and photographs, including a Shelepin family history and Evegenia Shelepina.
29-Mar-2009 We have created a "References and Allusions" category in the Literary Pages for poetic and prose references and allusions in the Swallows and Amazons canon. This is something that Tim Johns, the creator of the Literary Pages, had hoped to have the Literary Pages do at some point in the future. We already had a link to "Casabianca" to serve as the basis for the new category, which will undoubtedly grow apace. Contributions welcome!
26-Mar-2009 We have published an appreciation of Tim Johns and his contributions to Ransome lore and to All Things Ransome at Tim Johns, and request that anyone who would like to offer a story or information please contact Dave Thewlis.
24-Mar-2009 Stuart Wier's "The Boats of Swallows and Amazons" pages are now hosted on All Things Ransome, linked from the home page as their own category. Our thanks to the Stuart Wier, the other contributors, and to the AusTARS website and webmasters.
07-Mar-2009 Robert Thompson's The Children's Books of Arthur Ransome is now hosted on All Things Ransome and the link from the Literary Pages points to the material on the ATR site. This is a complicated set of pages so if any readers discover problems please let us know!
25-Feb-2009 The Literary Pages index now has a new category, "Books", as a result of the following item.

Arthur Ransome's 1906 "Nature Books for Children", The Child's Guide to the Seasons, Pond and Stream, and Things In Our Garden, are now available as electronic PDFs.
13-Feb-2009 Peter Hyland's Online Index to Mixed Moss has been updated to the present day. These files contain Subjects and Authors indices and an index to the now-defunct Despatches.
08-Dec-2008 Transcripts and PDFS of the original logs kept by George and Josephine Russell of the fitting-out of Cochybondhu and the voyages of Fairway and Fairway X (the Northern River Pirates) in 1938 and 1939 were added to the Literary Pages.
17-Oct-2008 A section was provided on the home page to the Downloadable Maps of Wild Cat Island, The Lake, and Secret Water, from Mike Fields.
27-Sep-2008 A link was provided on the home page to the Japanese Language Arthur Ransome Wiki from Peter Dowden.
1-Aug-2008 "It's a Wise Child", by Isobel Laidler, aged 12, added to the Articles section on the Literary Pages.
31-Jul-2008 Announcements in the Announcements and Broadsides section will now be retained after they are no longer timely, as they may be of future interest to enthusiasts and researchers. If the section grows unwieldy we will implement an archive.
26-Jul-2008 A link was provided on the home page to the new Arthur Ransome Wiki recently implemented by Peter Dowden.
16-Jul-2008 An Excerpt from How the Heather Looks, by Joan Bodger, recounting an interview with Arthur Ransome in 1958, was added to the Articles section of the Literary Pages. Our grateful thanks to the Estate of Joan Bodger for permission to reprint this excerpt from her book.
24-Jun-2008 "26' Hillyard Barnacle Goose for sale" was added to the Announcements and Broadsides section.
15-May-2008 A new section, Announcements and Broadsides, was added to All Things Ransome as a place for postings about Ransome-related events and occurrences of interest to Ransome enthusiasts.

"We Didn't Mean To Go To Sea – from a novel to a play" was added to the new Announcements and Broadsides section.
07-May-2008 "A Syrian Boathouse" added to the Articles section of the Literary Pages. This article was contributed by Jill Goulder late in 2006.
13-Apr-2008 "Whose side was he on?", "A sailor with strange credentials", "Casabianca" added to the Literary Pages.

Revised Copyright and Usage Information; new e-mail address for contributions.
08-Apr-2008 Added the "Namesake (Totem) Animals" articles by Molly McGinnis to the Literary Pages.
07-Apr-2008 Moved Ed Kiser's Morse Code Training Program package to a separate page and added a sample of program output.
06-Apr-2008 Added Ed Kiser's Morse Code Training Program package to the downloads section.
03-Apr-2008 Link to Robert Thompson's "The Children's Books of Arthur Ransome" survey of the many editions of AR's twelve S&A books added to the Guides section of the Literary Pages.
31-Mar-2008 Revised Mixed Moss Subjects and Authors indexes updated to March 2008 from Peter Hyland.
30-Mar-2008 Added Ed Kiser's Blue Skies star mapper program to the Downloads section.

Added a link to some Morse Code training programs and other Morse Code items to the Downloads section.
28-Mar-2008 Links to digitized versions of "Bevis: The Story of a Boy" and "Wood Magic" on Google Books were added to the Introduction page of the "Bevis" selection in the Literary Pages.

The "Trivia" page in the literary pages was given its own section in the Literary Pages index.

The literary pages were scanned to fix errant 'em dashes' and 'en dashes' in the text - originally X'97' (Decimal 151) and X'96' (Decimal 150) were used for the em dash and the en dash respectively. This worked with some code pages but not all, and violates Unicode and especially UTF-8, as does — often used as em dash but still incorrect. The characters were replaced with — for em dash and – for en dash, the correct encoding for those glyphs as of HTML 4.0 (which supports Unicode). This encoding works with current browsers but might cause a problem on older browsers; however the choice seems to be binary.
27-Mar-2008 All Things Ransome went live. Primary content is Literary Pages as archived in very late 2006 or early 2007, thus probably up-to-date, plus downloads page. On the Literary Pages,
  • All pages were updated to return to the Literary Pages index page or to the All Things Ransome index page as needed
  • A new review of "Signaling from MARS" was found by Andrew and it and the Claudia FitzHubert interviews were combined folloowing Tim's model for book interviews
  • Some obsolete links in articles, especially in the Masefield article, were replaced by current links also from Andrew
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