Coniston Water G. Collingwood wrote a historical novel "Thorstein of the Mere" about the Northmen who settled on the island in the lake. The Victorian and Edwardian artist Henry Robinson Hall settled in Coniston during the Great War and is buried in the parish church graveyard. Arthur Ransome set his children's novel "Swallows and Amazons" and the sequels "Swallowdale", "Winter Holiday", "Pigeon Post" and "The Picts and the Martyrs" around a fictional lake derived from a combination of Coniston Water and Windermere. The fictional lake resembles Windermere, but the surrounding hills and fells resemble those of Coniston Water. Some of Coniston Water's
Swallows and Amazons series published works, however, are presented simply as continuing adventures in the series, though different in a number of ways. Most obvious is the inclusion of fear and violence (which is mostly absent from rest of the series) and the extended voyages would have taken the children from school for unacceptably long periods. Both books are described on their title pages as "based on information supplied by the Swallows and Amazons", a description which is absent from the rest of the books in the series. Two abandoned chapters of "Peter Duck" (called "Their Own Story") were found in Ransome's papers held