Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 21:17, 19 June 2006

Enid Mary Blyton (August 11, 1897–November 28, 1968) was a British children's author. She is noted particularly for numerous series of books, based on recurring characters and designed for different age groups.

Her work involves mainly children's adventure stories, and some fantasy, occasionally involving magic. Her books were immensely popular in Britain, India, New Zealand and Australia and remain so to this day. They have been translated into 40 languages, including Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Hebrew, Japanese, Malay, Spanish, and Swedish. Translated versions became and have remained extremely popular in many parts of Europe and Asia.

Personal life

Blyton was born on 11 August 1897 at 354 Lordship Lane, East Dulwich, London, the eldest child of Thomas Carey Blyton (1870–1920), a salesman, and his wife, Theresa Mary, née Harrison (1874–1950). There were two younger brothers, Hanly (b. 1899), and Carey (b. 1902), who were born after the family had moved to the neighbouring suburb of Beckenham. Enid was a talented pianist, and obtained a Licentiate diploma from the Royal Academy of Music, but gave up her musical studies when she trained as a teacher. She taught for five years at Bickley and Surbiton, writing in her spare time.

Her first book Child Whispers, a collection of poems, was published in 1922.

On 28 August 1924 Enid Blyton married Major Hugh Alexander Pollock DSO (1888–1971), editor of the book department in the publishing firm of George Newnes, which published two of her books that year. The couple moved to Buckinghamshire. Eventually she and Hugh moved to a house called "Green Hedges" in Beaconsfield. She had two children: Gillian Mary Baverstock (b. 15 July 1931) and Imogen Mary Smallwood (b. 27 October 1935). By 1939 her marriage to Hugh Pollock was in difficulties, and in 1941 she met Kenneth Fraser Darrell Waters (1892–1967), a London surgeon, with whom she began a friendship which quickly developed into something deeper. After each had divorced, they married at the City of Westminster register office on 20 October 1943, and she subsequently changed the surname of her two daughters to Darrell Waters. Hugh Pollock remarried and had little contact with his daughters thereafter. Enid Blyton's second marriage was very happy and, as far as her public was concerned, she moved smoothly into her role as a devoted doctor's wife, living with him and her two daughters at Green Hedges. Afflicted by presenile dementia, Enid Blyton was moved into a nursing home three months before her death; she died at the Greenways Nursing Home, 11 Fellows Road, Hampstead, London, on 28 November 1968, and was cremated at Golders Green.

Most popular works

Best known of her works are (in alphabetical order):

• The Adventure series
• The Barney Mystery series
• The Circus series
• The Famous Five series
• The Magic Faraway Tree series
• The Malory Towers series
• The Mary Mouse series
• The Mystery series (also known as the Five Find-Outers)
• The Naughtiest Girl series
• The Noddy books
• The Secret Seven series
• The St. Clare's series
• The Wishing-Chair series

Other works

She wrote hundreds of other books for young and older children. She also filled a large number of magazine pages, particularly the long-running Sunny Stories. An estimate puts her total book publication at around 600 titles, not including decades of magazine writing. It is said at one point she produced 10,000 words a day.

Such astonishingly prolific output led many to believe that some of her work was ghost-written. No ghost writers have come forward. She used a pseudonym Mary Pollock for a few titles (middle name plus first married name). The last volumes in her most famous series were published in 1963. Many books still appeared, but were mainly story books made up from re-cycled work.

Blyton also wrote numerous books on nature and Biblical themes. Her story The Land of Far-Beyond is a Christian parable along the lines of John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, with modern children as the central characters.

Subject matter

Blyton's books managed to tap into the dreams of pre-pubescent children. The code words are 'mystery' and 'adventure'. Children are free to play and explore without adult interference, more clearly than in most authors before or since. Adult characters are usually either authority figures (such as policemen, teachers, or parents) or adversaries to be conquered by the children. The children are often self-sufficient, spending whole days, or even more than one day, away from home. This theme is taken to its extreme in The Secret Island, wherein a group of children run away from abusive guardians to live on an island together, making a home and fending for themselves until their parents return.

Blyton's books are generally split into three types. One involves ordinary children in extraordinary situations; having adventures, solving crimes, or otherwise finding themselves in unusual circumstances. Examples include the Famous Five and Secret Seven, and the Adventure series. The second type is the boarding school story; the plots of these are usually less extraordinary than the first type, with more emphasis on the day-to-day life at a boarding school. This is the world of the midnight feast, the practical joke, and the social interaction of the various types of character that can be found at school. Examples of this type are the Malory Towers stories, the St Clare's series, and the Naughtiest Girl books.

The third type is the fantastical. Children are typically transported into a magical world in which they meet fairies, goblins, elves, or other fantastical creatures. Examples of this type are the Wishing-Chair books and the Magic Faraway Tree.

Controversies

The books are very much of their time, particularly the 1950s titles. They reflect a none-too-subtle version of Britain's class system, as in rough versus well-behaved. Undoubtedly present are some stereotypes on gender. Some argue, from a current perspective, that the portrayal of golliwogs, amongst others, was racist. On the other hand, the Famous Five displayed a remarkably modern equality of teamwork between the sexes, and while golliwogs often appeared as villains in the Noddy books, elsewhere in her fantasy works they appeared as the heroes.

It was frequently reported, in the 1950s and also from the 1980s onwards, that various children's libraries removed some of Blyton's works from the shelves. The history of such 'Blyton bans' is confused. Some librarians certainly at times felt that Blyton's restricted use of language, a conscious product of her teaching background, militated against appreciation of more literary qualities. There was some precedent, in the treatment of L. Frank Baum's Oz books (and the many sequels, by others) by librarians in the U.S. in the 1930s.

Much play has been made of naive language permitting double entendre (especially the opportunity for the reader to imagine sexual connotations), clearly not intended by the author. Examples cited include Noddy "jumping into bed" with Big Ears, another character, and the inclusion in the "Magic Faraway Tree" series of characters called Dick and Fanny (changed to "Rick" and "Frannie" in modern reprints). This is probably journalistic froth. This whole area is subject to urban myths and the carefree retelling in newspapers of anecdotes as factual (recycling the old press cuttings, in fact) making it somewhat difficult to discern the truth.

A more careful account of anti-Blyton attacks is given in Chapter 4 of Robert Druce's This Day Our Daily Fictions. The British Journal of Education in 1955 carried a piece by Janice Dohn, an American children's librarian, considering Blyton's writing together with authors of formula fiction, and making negative comments about Blyton's devices and tone. A 1958 article in Encounter by Colin Welch, directed against the Noddy character, was reprinted in a New Zealand librarians' periodical. This gave rise to the first rumour of a New Zealand 'library ban' on Blyton’s books, a recurrent press canard. Policy on buying and stocking Blyton's books by British public libraries drew attention in newspaper reports from the early 1960s to the end of the 1970s, as local decisions were made by a London borough, Birmingham, Nottingham and other central libraries. There is no evidence that her books' popularity ever suffered. She was defended by populist journalists, and others; left-of-centre newspapers ran articles condemning her work, with a piece in 1966 in The Guardian claiming that Blyton wrote more insidiously dangerous right-wing literature than that published by British fascist groups.

Modern reprints of some books have had changes made (such as the replacement of Golliwogs with teddy bears). This is the publishers' reaction to contemporary attitudes on racial stereotypes, and probably enforced by market conditions and pressure groups. It has itself drawn criticism from those adults who view it as tampering with an important piece of the history of children's literature. The Druce book brings up a single case of a story, The Little Black Doll, which could be interpreted as a racist message (the doll wanted to be pink) and which was turned on its head in a reprint.

Trivia

An oblique critique of a Blyton work is found in Jasper Fforde's novel The Well of Lost Plots (2003). The heroine, Thursday Next, should change the ending of Shadow the Sheepdog by entering the novel's world. Thursday is surprised at the one-dimensionality of the characters. They have limited vocabulary, intelligence and emotional scope, and are confined to designated paths. Even stranger is that the characters attack Thursday simply because they are hungry for feeling and emotion. She finally escapes after showing the characters how to feel guilt, enmity, hate, anger and so on, missing from Blyton's world according to Fforde.

On Flanders and Swann's album At the Drop of Another Hat, Michael Flanders introduces his partner Donald Swann, in part, as "the Enid Blyton of English light music."

Pop group The Enid took their name from her.

Many of the hardcover editions of her books bore a facsimile of her signature.

Her nephew is the Doctor Who composer Carey Blyton.

The books spurred a never before seen craze amongst the Indian children in the 1970-1990 period for story books, which is known as Bookworm Period.

Some of the stories were said to have been insipred by the Collingwood Fairy incidents.

See also

• Category:Enid Blyton's books for chronological listings
• Enid Blyton's illustrators

References

• Enid Blyton (1952) The Story of My Life
• Barbara Stoney (1974) Enid Blyton, 1992 The Enid Blyton Biography, Hodder, London ISBN 0340583487 (paperback) ISBN 0340165146
• S. G. Ray (1982) The Blyton Phenomenon
• Bob Mullan (1987) The Enid Blyton Story
• George Greenfield (1998) Enid Blyton
• Robert Druce (1992) This Day Our Daily Fictions: An Enquiry into the Multi-Million Bestseller Status of Enid Blyton and Ian Fleming

External links

• The Enid Blyton Society
• EnidBlyton.net
• Heather's Blyton Pages
• Enid Blyton Collectors' and Enthusiasts' Guide to First Editions

• 1897 births
• 1968 deaths
• Londoners
• English children's writers
• Enid Blyton
• Mystery writers
• Women writers