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Araucaria · 01-23-2018, 02:08 PM

I'd always thought that Arthur Ransome would be pretty politically correct (having married Trotsky's secretary), but at the denouement of his Swallows & Amazons novel "The Big Six" one of the characters uses a word that has now (in editions published after the author's death) become "negroes".

It is such a celebrated occurrence that it gets a mention in that Wiki page.

It's worth noting that Ransome puts it into the mouth of one of the three working-class protagonists (Pete, of the Death and Glories). Ransome probably thought that in 1940, when the book was written, middle-class children wouldn't use the word. Ransome's dialogue is quite well tuned to the different backgrounds of the children concerned.

I first read the book in the early 1960s (myself a working class boy in SE London), but even by then the usage stuck out as anachronistic.

01-23-2018, 02:08 PM	#77
Araucaria Bibliophile Posts: 166 Karma: 934516 Join Date: Jul 2011 Location: Cantal in the French Auvergne Device: Kindle Voyage, Kobo Libra H20, Kindle PW2, Moon Pro on Lenovo tablet	I'd always thought that Arthur Ransome would be pretty politically correct (having married Trotsky's secretary), but at the denouement of his Swallows & Amazons novel "The Big Six" one of the characters uses a word that has now (in editions published after the author's death) become "negroes". It is such a celebrated occurrence that it gets a mention in that Wiki page. It's worth noting that Ransome puts it into the mouth of one of the three working-class protagonists (Pete, of the Death and Glories). Ransome probably thought that in 1940, when the book was written, middle-class children wouldn't use the word. Ransome's dialogue is quite well tuned to the different backgrounds of the children concerned. I first read the book in the early 1960s (myself a working class boy in SE London), but even by then the usage stuck out as anachronistic.