They are gentle children's books which tell the stories of boats, the Broads and adventure.
But some of the works of Arthur Ransome have now prompted an unlikely row between academics over the author's use of the Norfolk dialect.
Graeme Davis, a research fellow in linguistics at the University of Buckingham, has carried out a study into Ransome's work and claims that he penned the 'best single source' of Norfolk's fragmented dialect.
In particular, he cites 200 lines from Ransome's unfinished work, Coots in the North, as his 'masterpiece of Norfolk dialect'.
However, the research has not gone down well with honorary UEA professor and president of the Friends of Norfolk Dialect, Peter Trudgill, pictured, who has contested many of its findings and described Ransome's use of the dialect as 'rather poor'.
Written in the early 1940s, Coots in the North would have been Ransome's third book partly set in the Broads, following on from Coot Club and The Big Six.
It revolved around a new cruiser being built at a Horning boatyard and then delivered to the Lake District, where Swallows and Amazons and other Ransome works are set.
The plan was to unite his Norfolk characters with those in the Lake District, but the project was abandoned after just four chapters.
'Norfolk is often a form of language which is in part learned and used as an affirmation of regional pride,' Dr Davis adds.
'The fragments found in Coot Club and The Big Six are valuable; outstanding for the study of the dialect is the conversation he constructs in Coots in the North, and which provides an extensive and reliable source for 1930s Norfolk, perhaps the best single source now available.'
Ransome spent the years from 1935 to 1940 living in Suffolk and sailing the Broads, and Dr Davis says Coots in the North is likely to be born from experience.
'He has recorded what he heard rather than trying to make a joke out of it,' added Dr Davis. 'These dialects are used as a sense of identity.
'What Ransome has given us is a snippet of Broads dialect, which takes the story forward.
'We are really scrabbling around in other texts for county dialects, because people very much wanted to present the standard form of language.
'Norfolk has been a long time dying out, and you have to go back to the 18th century to hear the dialect in all its glory.'
However, Professor Trudgill, an EDP columnist, said: 'This does not lead me to change the view I formed of Ransome's representation of the Norfolk dialect when, as a native Norfolk speaker, I read Coot Club... which was that it is actually rather poor.'
He added that the work was published in an in-house, non-peer reviewed journal, of which Dr Davis is the editor, and said he did 'not believe it would have seen the light of day otherwise'.
In response, Dr Davis accepted earlier Ransome works, including Coot Club, are 'not particularly impressive' in terms of Norfolk dialect.
Do you have a story about the Norfolk dialect? Email dominic.gilbert@archant.co.uk
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