Children's literature R. M. Ballantyne and G. A. Henty specializing in the production of adventure fiction for boys. This inspired writers who normally catered to adult audiences to write for children, and an example is Robert Louis Stevenson's (1850–94) classic pirate story "Treasure Island" (1883). In the years after the First World War, writers such as Arthur Ransome (1884–1967) developed the adventure genre by setting the adventure in Britain rather than distant countries. Ransome began publishing in 1930 his Swallows and Amazons series of children's books about the school-holiday adventures of children, mostly in the English Lake District and the Norfolk Broads.
Swallows and Amazons series goes on; the final book occurs three to four years after the first (see timeline below). There is an inconsistency in the only two dates mentioned in the series. In the first book the year is stated to be 1929; while in the second book, "Swallowdale", which is supposed to take place one year later, the year is given as 1931. A second inconsistency is that while Bridget is only a year old in the first novel, she has aged five years by the time of "Secret Water". While the emphasis of all the books is on the activities of