Arthur Ransome - Early Writing, Including Life in Russia

Early Writing, Including Life in Russia

Some of Ransome's early works were The Nature Books for Children a series of children's books commissioned by publisher Anthony Treherne. Only three of the six planned volumes were published before the publisher went bankrupt. They have recently been made available in PDF format on the All Things Ransome website.

In his first important book, Bohemia in London (1907), Ransome introduced the history of London's bohemian literary and artistic communities and some of its current representatives. A curiosity in 1903 about a visiting Japanese poet, Yone Noguchi, led to an ongoing friendship with Japanese painter (and Chelsea neighbour) Yoshio Markino, who in turn introduced him to the bohemian circle of Pamela Colman Smith.

Ransome married Ivy Constance Walker in 1909 and they had one daughter, Tabitha. It was not a happy marriage: Ransome found his wife's demands to spend less time on writing and more with her and their daughter a great strain and, as Ransome's biographer Hugh Brogan notes, "...it was impossible to be a good husband to Ivy". They divorced in 1924.

Ransome began writing books of biography and literary criticism on various authors, one on Edgar Allen Poe was published in 1910. His book on Oscar Wilde, published in 1912, embroiled him in a libel suit with Lord Alfred Douglas His wife Ivy attended the trial, sitting in the public gallery as Ransome would not let her sit beside him. Her apparent enjoyment of the public notoriety the case attracted added to the stress on their marriage. The publisher Daniel Macmillan dined with Arthur and Ivy every day during the trial so that Ivy could not quarrel with Arthur. Ransome won the suit, but suppressed the contentious text from subsequent editions of the Wilde biography. Adding to Ransome's "wretched" thirteen months waiting for the case to come to trial was the action of his publisher, Charles Granville. Wilde had been prepared under the guidance of publisher Martin Secker, but Granville had promised better returns and Secker agreed to release the rights. In exchange for a promise of a guaranteed income Ransome handed Wilde over to Granville. The work was well received and successful, running to eight editions, but Ransome saw little in return; in 1912 Granville was charged with embezzlement and fled the country, leaving Ransome to struggle even to register himself as a creditor of Granville's ruined company. Furthermore, his neglect of his health—he suffered from piles from sitting too long in wet boats, and a stomach ulcer—had been exacerbated by the pressure of defending the legal action.

Ransome had also been working on a similar literary biography of Robert Louis Stevenson but this was abandoned with the manuscript in the first draft and only rediscovered in 1999. It was subsequently edited and finally published almost a century later in 2011 as Arthur Ransome's Long-lost Study of Robert Louis Stevenson.

In 1913 Ransome left his wife and daughter and went to Russia to study Russian folklore. In 1916, Ransome published Old Peter's Russian Tales, a collection of 21 folktales from Russia. After the start of World War I in 1914, he became a foreign correspondent and covered the war on the Eastern Front for a radical newspaper, the Daily News. He also covered the Russian revolutions of 1917, developed some sympathy for the Bolshevik cause and became personally close to a number of its leaders, including Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky. He met the woman who would become his second wife, Evgenia Petrovna Shelepina, who at that time worked as Trotsky's personal secretary.

Ransome provided some information to British officials and the British Secret Intelligence Service (then known as MI1c), which gave him the code name S76 in their files. In October 1919 Ransome met Rex Leeper of the Foreign Office's Political Intelligence Department, who threatened to reveal this unless Ransome privately submitted his articles and public speaking engagements for approval. Ransome's response was "indignant". MI5, the British Security Service, kept watch on him because of his opposition to the Allied intervention against the Russian Revolution. On one of his visits to the United Kingdom, the authorities searched and interviewed him and threatened him with arrest.

In October 1919, as Ransome was returning to Moscow on behalf of The Manchester Guardian, the Estonian foreign minister Ants Piip entrusted him to deliver a secret armistice proposal to the Bolsheviks. At that time the Estonians were fighting their War of Independence alongside the White movement of counter-revolutionary forces. After crossing the battle lines on foot, Ransome passed the message, which to preserve secrecy had not been written down and depended for its authority only on the high personal regard in which he was held in both countries, to diplomat Maxim Litvinov in Moscow. To deliver the reply, which accepted Piip's conditions for peace, Ransome had to return by the same risky means, but this time he had Evgenia with him. Estonia withdrew from the conflict and Ransome and Evgenia set up home together in the capital Reval (Tallinn).

After the Allied intervention Ransome remained in the Baltic states and built a cruising yacht, Racundra. He wrote a successful book about his experiences, Racundra's First Cruise. He joined the staff of The Manchester Guardian when he returned to Russia and the Baltic states. Following his divorce, he married Evgenia and brought her to live in England, where he continued writing for The Guardian, often on foreign affairs, and also writing the "Country Diary" column on fishing.

By 1937, MI5 appeared satisfied of Ransome's loyalty to Britain. However, evidence uncovered in the KGB files following the break-up of the Soviet Union seems to indicate that Evgenia Ransome, at least, was involved in smuggling diamonds from the Soviet Union to Paris to help fund the Comintern. The topic is discussed in a 2009 book by Roland Chambers, The Last Englishman: the Double Life of Arthur Ransome.