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.
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,