Arthur Ransome was born in Leeds, England to Cyril and Edith Ransome on 18th January 1884. He was the elder brother of Geoffrey and of their two sisters, Cicely and Joyce. Sadly, his father, Cyril, died when Arthur was only thirteen years old, in 1897. Arthur was not a brilliant scholar in school, but he loved to read and aspired to become a writer. He met William G. Collingwood (in 1903), the author of *Thorstein of the Mere*, a book Arthur had read as a child. Collingwood and his family more or less adopted Arthur, and, in time, Arthur published his first two collections of essays, *The Souls of Streets* and *The Stone Lady*. Neither collection was especially well received, but Arthur later found success with his other books.Arthur continued to write after publishing his *Nature Books for Children*, including this book, *Pond and Stream*, as well as *Child's Book of the Seasons* and *Things in Our Garden*. In due course, Arthur married, wrote about other writers, including Edgar Allen Poe and Oscar Wilde, was sued for libel, travelled to Russia (where he reported on the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917), divorced, remarried---this time to Leon Trotsky's secretary---travelled to China, among other places, and, after some time, returned to England. There he wrote the books for which he is best known: *Swallows and Amazons*, a series of children's adventures set in the beautiful Lake District of England. This series has never been out of print and has even been adapted into feature-length films, in 1974 and 2019.In 1953, Arthur was awarded the honour of Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for his outstanding contributions to British society. Arthur died at a ripe age of eighty-three on 3rd June 1967 in Manchester, England. During his life he wrote many short stories, essays, and two unfinished works---*The River Comes First* and *Coots in the North*---which have since been published.