We recently visited Brantwood, and as we drove and walked round the Lake I was thinking about the many famous literary figures who have lived and visited here. I've posted here about Ruskin and Eliza Lynn Linton before, as well as exploring the significance of the area for Arthur Ransome. But there are less well known residents and visitors, or very well known literary figures not normally associated with the Lakes.
In the former catergory is W G Collingwood who lived at Lane Head. Collingwood was a portrait and landscape painter, and also an antiquary, archaeologist and author. He was strongly influenced by William Morris and John Ruskin, becoming Ruskin's secretary in 1881.
Collingwood wrote many books - both fiction and non-fiction. Hugh Walpole said that The Lake Counties is "the grandest prose writing about the Lake District in existence". Collingwood went on to develop a career as a novelist. Thorstein of the Mere, A Saga of the Northmen in Lakeland (which was set around Coniston) is probably his finest novel. It was the favourite childhood book of Arthur Ransome, who later became Collingwood’s friend after they met while walking on The Old Man of Coniston.
Collingwood joined the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society and wrote a large number of papers for its Transactions; becoming editor in 1900. Collingwood was particularly interested in Norse culture and the Norsemen, as well as antiquities.
In 1927 he published Northumbrian Crosses of the Pre-Norman Age, illustrated with his own drawings.
