Clifford Webb Bernard Meninsky and then from 1923 to 1926 he was a part-time lecturer at Central School of Art in Birmingham. Webb produced illustrations for the first two books of the Swallows and Amazons series by Arthur Ransome, which were used in some 1930s editions. Because Ransome did not like those produced by Steven Spurrier for the first book, "Swallows and Amazons", those were not used in its first edition (1930), apart from the endpaper map and dust jacket. In 1931 the second edition contained Webb's illustrations, as did the first edition of the sequel, "Swallowdale". (Ransome himself was the original
Nancy Blackett chance, being so much dominated by Nancy". When Ransome was first writing "Swallows and Amazons" in 1928, it was unusual for a female character to display such active leadership over males as Nancy Blackett does in the whole series of books and whilst children in children's literature had become increasingly self-motivated towards the end of the 19th century, they were, until Swallows and Amazons, still largely bounded by a "closed nursery-orientated world". In "Secret Water", Daisy the leader of the "Eels" is their leader, although younger than her brothers Dum and Dee. Nevertheless, despite writing Nancy in an unconventional role,