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 Steven Spurrier that were commissioned by his publisher, Jonathan Cape, that the only pictures in the first edition were the endpaper map of the lake and a map of Wild Cat Island. For the second edition, Clifford Webb was commissioned to produce the illustrations, which met with grudging approval from Ransome. Webb also illustrated "Swallowdale", but Ransome decided that he would personally illustrate the third book, "Peter Duck". As this book was supposedly based on information supplied by the children themselves, Ransome drew the pictures as though done by the characters. These illustrations were so popular that Ransome illustrated the