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| birth_name = Enid Mary Blyton
| birth_date = {{Birth date|1897|8|11|df=y}}
| birth_place = {{nowrap|[[East Dulwich]],
| death_date = {{Death date and age|1968|11|28|1897|8|11|df=y}}
| death_place = [[Hampstead]],
| resting_place = [[Golders Green Crematorium]]
| occupation = {{cslist|Novelist|poet|teacher|short story writer}}
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| website =
}}
'''Enid Mary Blyton''' (11 August 1897 – 28 November 1968) was an English [[children's writer]], whose books have been worldwide bestsellers since the 1930s, selling more than 600 million copies. Her books are still enormously popular and have been translated into ninety languages. As
Her first book, ''[[Child Whispers]]'', a 24-page collection of poems, was published in 1922. Following the commercial success of her early novels, such as ''[[The Wishing-Chair (series)|Adventures of the Wishing-Chair]]'' (1937) and ''[[The Enchanted Wood (novel)|The Enchanted Wood]]'' (1939), Blyton went on to build a literary empire, sometimes producing fifty books a year in addition to her prolific magazine and newspaper contributions. Her writing was unplanned and sprang largely from her [[unconscious mind]]; she typed her stories as events unfolded before her. The sheer volume of her work and the speed with which she produced it led to rumours that Blyton employed an army of [[ghost writers]], a charge she
Blyton's work became increasingly controversial among literary critics, teachers, and parents beginning in the 1950s due to the alleged unchallenging nature of her writing and her themes, particularly in the Noddy series. Some libraries and schools banned her works, and from the 1930s until the 1950s, the [[BBC]] refused to broadcast her stories because of their perceived lack of literary merit. Her books have been criticised as elitist, sexist, racist, xenophobic, and at odds with the more progressive environment that was emerging in post-World War II Britain, but updated versions of her books continue to be popular since her death in 1968.
She felt she had a responsibility to provide her readers with a strong moral framework, so she encouraged them to support worthy causes. In particular, through the clubs she set up or supported, she encouraged and organised them to raise funds for animal and paediatric charities. The story of Blyton's life was dramatised in ''[[Enid (film)|Enid]]'', a BBC television film featuring [[Helena Bonham Carter]] in the title role. It was first broadcast in the UK on [[BBC Four]] in 2009.
==Early life and education==
Enid Blyton was born on 11 August 1897 in [[East Dulwich]], south London, United Kingdom, the eldest of three children, to Thomas Carey Blyton (1870–1920), a cutlery salesman (recorded in the 1911 census with the occupation of "Mantle Manufacturer dealer [in] women's suits, skirts, etc.") and his wife Theresa Mary (''née'' Harrison; 1874–1950). Enid's younger brothers, Hanly (1899–1983) and Carey (1902–1976), were born after the family had moved to a semi-detached house in [[Beckenham]], then a village in [[Kent]].{{R|EBSChrono}} A few months after her birth, Enid almost died from [[whooping cough]], but was nursed back to health by her father, whom she adored.{{Sfnp|Baverstock|1997|p=5|ps=none}} Thomas Blyton ignited Enid's interest in nature; in her autobiography she wrote that he "loved flowers and birds and wild animals, and knew more about them than anyone I had ever met".{{Sfnp|Blyton|1952|p=54|ps=none}} He also passed on his interest in gardening, art, music, literature, and theatre, and the pair often went on nature walks, much to the disapproval of Enid's mother, who showed little interest in her daughter's pursuits.{{R|EBSBio}} Enid was devastated when her father left the family shortly after her 13th birthday to live with another woman. Enid and her mother did not have a good relationship, and after she left home, Enid gave people the impression that her mother was dead. Enid did not attend either of her parents' funerals.{{Sfnp|Thompson|Keenan|2006|p=77|ps=none}}
From 1907 to 1915, Blyton attended St Christopher's School in Beckenham, where she enjoyed physical activities and became school tennis champion and [[lacrosse]] captain.{{Sfnp|Druce|1992|p=9|ps=none}} She was not keen on all the academic subjects, but excelled in writing and, in 1911, entered [[Arthur Mee]]'s children's poetry competition. Mee offered to print her verses, encouraging her to produce more.{{R|EBSChrono}} Blyton's mother considered her efforts at writing to be a "waste of time and money", but she was encouraged to persevere by Mabel Attenborough, the aunt of school friend [[Mary Potter (painter)|Mary Potter]].{{R|EBSBio}}
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==Early writing career==
{{
In 1920, Blyton moved to [[Chessington]] and began writing in her spare time. The following year, she won the ''Saturday Westminster Review'' writing competition with her essay "On the Popular Fallacy that to the Pure All Things are Pure".{{Sfnp|Stoney|2011|loc=loc. 624–630|ps=none}} Publications such as ''[[The Londoner]]'', ''Home Weekly'' and ''[[The Bystander]]'' began to show an interest in her short stories and poems.{{R|EBSChrono}}
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==Commercial success==
===New series: 1934–1948===
The first of twenty-eight books in Blyton's [[Old Thatch series]], ''The Talking Teapot and Other Tales'', was published in 1934, the same year as ''Brer Rabbit Retold'';{{Sfnp|Stoney|2011|loc=loc. 3910|ps=none}} (
Blyton's first full-length adventure novel, ''The Secret Island'', was published in 1938, featuring the characters of Jack, Mike, Peggy and Nora.{{R|SecretIsland}} Described by ''[[The Herald (Glasgow)|The Glasgow Herald]]'' as a "[[Robinson Crusoe]]-style adventure on an island in an English lake", ''The Secret Island'' was a lifelong favourite of Gillian's and spawned the [[The Secret Series (Enid Blyton)|Secret series]].{{R|Herald06}} The following year Blyton released her first book in the [[The Circus Series|Circus series]]{{Sfnp|Stoney|2011|loc=loc. 4096|ps=none}} and her initial book in the [[Amelia Jane]] series, ''Naughty Amelia Jane!''{{Sfnp|Stoney|2011|loc=loc. 4102|ps=none}} According to Gillian the main character was based on a large handmade doll given to her by her mother on her third birthday.{{R|Herald06}}
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[[File:Beaconsfield Themed Fencing - geograph.org.uk - 1386378.jpg|thumb|right|Blyton's characters [[Noddy (character)|Noddy]] and [[Big Ears (character)|Big Ears]]]]
Blyton's [[Noddy (character)|Noddy]], about a little wooden boy from Toyland, first appeared in the ''Sunday Graphic'' on 5 June 1949, and in November that year ''[[Noddy Goes to Toyland]]'', the first of at least two dozen books in the series, was published. The idea was conceived by one of Blyton's publishers, Sampson, Low, Marston and Company, who in 1949 arranged a meeting between Blyton and the Dutch illustrator [[Harmsen van der Beek]]. Despite having to communicate via an interpreter, he provided some initial sketches of how Toyland and its characters would be represented. Four days after the meeting Blyton sent the text of the first two Noddy books to her publisher, to be forwarded to van der Beek.{{Sfnp|Stoney|2011|loc=loc. 2444–2463|ps=none}} The Noddy books became one of her most successful and best-known series, and were hugely popular in the 1950s.{{Sfnp|Palmer|2013|p=130|ps=none}} An extensive range of sub-series, spin-offs and strip books
In 1950 Blyton established the company Darrell Waters Ltd to manage her affairs. By the early 1950s she had reached the peak of her output, often publishing more than fifty books a year, and she remained extremely prolific throughout much of the decade.{{R|FatalAddiction}} By 1955 Blyton had written her fourteenth Famous Five novel, ''[[Five Have Plenty of Fun]]'', her fifteenth Mary Mouse book, ''Mary Mouse in Nursery Rhyme Land'', her eighth book in the Adventure series, ''[[The Adventure Series#The River of Adventure|The River of Adventure]]'', and her seventh Secret Seven novel, ''[[The Secret Seven#Secret Seven Win Through (1955)|Secret Seven Win Through]]''. She completed the sixth and final book of the Malory Towers series, ''Last Term at Malory Towers'', in 1951.{{R|MaloryTowers}}
Blyton published several further books featuring the character of Scamp the terrier, following on from ''The Adventures of Scamp'', a novel she had released in 1943 under the
===Final works===
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In a letter to the psychologist Peter McKellar,{{Efn|McKellar had written to Blyton in February 1953 asking for the imagery techniques she employed in her writing, for a research project he had undertaken. The results of his investigation were published in ''Imagination and Thinking'' (1957).{{Sfnp|Stoney|2011|loc=loc. 3390|ps=none}}}} Blyton describes her writing technique:
{{
In another letter to McKellar she describes how in just five days she wrote the 60,000-word book ''The River of Adventure'', the eighth in her [[The Adventure Series|Adventure Series]],{{Sfnp|Stoney|2011|loc=loc. 3552|ps=none}} by listening to what she referred to as her "under-mind",{{Sfnp|Stoney|2011|loc=loc. 3452|ps=none}} which she contrasted with her "upper conscious mind".{{Sfnp|Stoney|2011|loc=loc. 3432|ps=none}} Blyton was unwilling to conduct any research or planning before beginning work on a new book, which coupled with the lack of variety in her life{{Efn|In her leisure time Blyton led the life of a typical suburban housewife, gardening, and playing golf or bridge. She rarely left England, preferring to holiday by the English coast, almost invariably in Dorset,{{Sfnp|Druce|1992|p=29|ps=none}} where she and her husband took over the lease of an 18-hole golf course at [[Studland|Studland Bay]] in 1951.{{Sfnp|Stoney|2011|loc=loc. 2154|ps=none}}}} according to Druce almost inevitably presented the danger that she might unconsciously, and clearly did, plagiarise the books she had read, including her own.{{Sfnp|Druce|1992|p=29|ps=none}} Gillian has recalled that her mother "never knew where her stories came from", but that she used to talk about them "coming from her 'mind's eye{{'}}", as did [[William Wordsworth]] and [[Charles Dickens]]. Blyton had "thought it was made up of every experience she'd ever had, everything she's seen or heard or read, much of which had long disappeared from her conscious memory" but never knew the direction her stories would take. Blyton further explained in her biography that "If I tried to think out or invent the whole book, I could not do it. For one thing, it would bore me and for another, it would lack the 'verve' and the extraordinary touches and surprising ideas that flood out from my imagination."{{R|Herald06}}
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Blyton's daily routine varied little over the years. She usually began writing soon after breakfast, with her portable typewriter on her knee and her favourite red Moroccan shawl nearby; she believed that the colour red acted as a "mental stimulus" for her. Stopping only for a short lunch break she continued writing until five o'clock, by which time she would usually have produced 6,000–10,000 words.{{Sfnp|Stoney|2011|loc=loc. 1859|ps=none}}
A 2000 article in ''[[The Malay Mail]]'' considers Blyton's children to have "lived in a world shaped by the realities of post-war austerity", enjoying freedom without
Victor Watson,
From the mid-1950s rumours began to circulate that Blyton had not written all the books attributed to her, a charge she found particularly distressing. She published an appeal in her magazine asking children to let her know if they heard such stories and, after one mother informed her that she had attended a parents' meeting at her daughter's school during which a young librarian had repeated the allegation,{{Sfnp|Stoney|2011|loc=loc. 2625–2645|ps=none}} Blyton decided in 1955 to begin legal proceedings.{{R|EBSChrono}} The librarian was eventually forced to make a public apology in open court early the following year, but the rumours that Blyton operated "a 'company' of ghost writers" persisted, as some found it difficult to believe that one woman working alone could produce such a volume of work.{{Sfnp|Stoney|2011|loc=loc. 2645|ps=none}}
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==Charitable work==
Blyton felt a responsibility to provide her readers with a positive moral framework, and she encouraged them to support worthy causes.{{R|BiographicalEncyclopedia}} Her view, expressed in a 1957 article, was that children should help animals and other children rather than adults:
{{
Blyton and the members of the children's clubs she promoted via her magazines raised a great deal of money for various charities; according to Blyton, membership of her clubs meant "working for others, for no reward". The largest of the clubs she was involved with was the Busy Bees, the junior section of the [[People's Dispensary for Sick Animals]], which Blyton had actively supported since 1933. The club had been set up by [[Maria Dickin]] in 1934,{{R|Timeline}} and after Blyton publicised its existence in the ''Enid Blyton Magazine'' it attracted 100,000 members in three years.{{Sfnp|Stoney|2011|loc=loc. 2228–2234|ps=none}} Such was Blyton's popularity among children that after she became Queen Bee in 1952 more than 20,000 additional members were recruited in her first year in office.{{R|Timeline}} The Enid Blyton Magazine Club was formed in 1953.{{R|EBSChrono}} Its primary objective was to raise funds to help those children with [[cerebral palsy]] who attended a centre in [[Cheyne Walk]], in Chelsea, London, by furnishing an on-site hostel among other things.{{Sfnp|Stoney|2011|loc=loc. 2262–2268|ps=none}}
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On 28 August 1924, Blyton married [[Major (British Army)|Major]] [[Hugh Alexander Pollock]], [[Distinguished Service Order|DSO]] (1888–1971) at [[Bromley]] Register Office, without inviting her family.{{R|EBSChrono}} They married shortly after his divorce from his first wife, with whom he had two sons, one of them already deceased. Pollock was editor of the book department in the publishing firm George Newnes, which became Blyton's regular publisher. It was he who requested her to write a book about animals, resulting in ''The Zoo Book'', completed in the month before their marriage.{{R|EBSChrono}} They initially lived in a flat in Chelsea before moving to Elfin Cottage in [[Beckenham]] in 1926 and then to Old Thatch in [[Bourne End, Buckinghamshire|Bourne End]] (called Peterswood in her books) in 1929.{{R|ODNB}}{{R|OldThatchGardens}} Blyton's first daughter, [[Gillian Mary Baverstock|Gillian]], was born on 15 July 1931, and, after a miscarriage in 1934,{{R|EBSBio}} she gave birth to a second daughter, Imogen, on 27 October 1935.{{R|EBSChrono}}
In 1938, she and her family moved to a house in [[Beaconsfield]], named [[Green Hedges]] by Blyton's readers, following a competition in her magazine. By the mid-1930s, Pollock had become a secret alcoholic, withdrawing increasingly from public life{{R|Ayrshire}}—possibly triggered through his meetings, as a publisher, with [[Winston Churchill]], which may have reawakened the trauma Pollock suffered during World War I. With the outbreak of World War II, he became involved in the [[Home Guard (United Kingdom)|Home Guard]]{{R|Ayrshire}} and also re-encountered [[Ida Crowe]], an aspiring writer 19 years his junior, whom he had first met years earlier. He made her an offer to join him as secretary in his posting to a Home Guard training center at [[Denbies]], a [[Gothic architecture|Gothic]] mansion in Surrey belonging to [[Roland Cubitt, 3rd Baron Ashcombe|Lord Ashcombe]], and they began a romantic relationship.{{R|Telegraph02}}
Blyton's marriage to Pollock was troubled for years, and according to Crowe's memoir, she had a series of affairs,{{R|Telegraph02}} including lesbian relationships with one of the children's nannies and with Lola Onslow, an artist who illustrated
Blyton and Darrell Waters married at the [[City of Westminster]] Register Office on 20 October 1943. She changed the surname of her daughters to Darrell Waters{{Sfnp|Stoney|2011|loc=loc. 2028–2040|ps=none}} and publicly embraced her new role as a happily married and devoted doctor's wife.{{R|ODNB}} After discovering she was pregnant in the spring of 1945, Blyton miscarried five months later, following a fall from a ladder. The baby would have been Darrell Waters's first child and the son for which they both longed.{{R|EBSBio}}
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In a 1982 survey of 10,000 eleven-year-old children, Blyton was voted their most popular writer.{{R|EBSChrono}} She is the [[list of most-translated individual authors|world's fourth most-translated author]], behind [[Agatha Christie]], [[Jules Verne]] and [[William Shakespeare]]{{R|UNESCOTranslation}} with her books being translated into 90 languages.{{R|Times2012}} From 2000 to 2010, Blyton was listed as a Top Ten author, selling almost 8 million copies (worth £31.2 million) in the UK alone.{{R|MacArthur}} In 2003, ''[[The Magic Faraway Tree (novel)|The Magic Faraway Tree]]'' was voted 66th in the BBC's [[Big Read]], a year-long survey of the UK's best-loved novels.{{R|BigRead}} In a 2008 poll conducted by the Costa Book Awards, Blyton was voted the UK's best-loved author ahead of [[Roald Dahl]], [[J. K. Rowling]], [[Jane Austen]] and Shakespeare.{{R|MostLoved}}{{R|BestLoved}} Her books continue to be very popular among children in [[Commonwealth of Nations|Commonwealth]] nations such as India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Singapore, Malta, New Zealand and Australia, and around the world.{{R|SundayObserver}} They have also seen a surge of popularity in China, where they are "big with every generation".{{R|MM00}} In March 2004, Chorion and the Chinese publisher Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press negotiated an agreement over the Noddy franchise, which included bringing the character to an animated series on television, with a potential audience of a further 95 million children under the age of five.{{R|NoddyInChina}}{{R|Mirror}} Chorion spent around £10 million digitising Noddy and, as of 2002, had made television agreements with at least 11 countries worldwide.{{R|Scotsman2002}}
Novelists influenced by Blyton include the crime writer [[Denise Danks]], whose fictional detective Georgina Powers is based on George from the Famous Five. [[Peter Hunt (literary critic)|Peter Hunt]]'s ''A Step off the Path'' (1985) is also influenced by the Famous Five, and the St. Clare's and Malory Towers series provided the inspiration for [[Jacqueline Wilson]]'s ''Double Act'' (1996) and [[Adèle Geras]]'s Egerton Hall trilogy (1990–92) respectively.{{Sfnp|Rudd|2004|p=114|ps=none}} Blyton was important to [[Stieg Larsson]]. "The series Stieg Larsson most often mentioned were the Famous Five and the Adventure books
==Critical backlash==
A.H. Thompson, who compiled an extensive overview of censorship efforts in the United Kingdom's public libraries, dedicated an entire chapter to "The Enid Blyton Affair", and wrote of her in 1975: {{
Blyton's range of plots and settings has been described as limited, repetitive and continually recycled.{{Sfnp|Druce|1992|p=29|ps=none}} Many of her books were critically assessed by teachers and librarians, deemed unfit for children to read, and removed from syllabuses and public libraries.{{R|ODNB}} Responding to claims that her moral views were "dependably predictable",{{Sfnp|Druce|1992|p=213|ps=none}} Blyton commented that "most of you could write down perfectly correctly all the things that I believe in and stand for – you have found them in my books, and a writer's books are always a faithful reflection of himself".{{Sfnp|Blyton|1952|p=104|ps=none}}
From the 1930s to the 1950s the BBC operated a ''de facto'' ban on dramatising Blyton's books for radio, considering her to be a "second-rater" whose work was without literary merit.{{R|AdamsTelegraph}}{{R|SmallBeer}}{{Efn|Blyton submitted her first proposal to the BBC in 1936.{{R|SmallBeer}}}} The children's literary critic [[Margery Fisher]] likened Blyton's books to "slow poison",{{R|ODNB}} and Jean E. Sutcliffe of the BBC's schools broadcast department wrote of Blyton's ability to churn out "mediocre material", noting that "her capacity to do so amounts to genius ... anyone else would have died of boredom long ago".{{R|SutcliffeMemo}} [[Michael Rosen]], Children's Laureate from 2007 until 2009, wrote that "I find myself flinching at occasional bursts of snobbery and the assumed level of privilege of the children and families in the books
Despite criticism by contemporaries that her work's quality began to suffer in the 1950s at the expense of its increasing volume, Blyton nevertheless capitalised on being generally regarded at the time as "a more 'savoury', English alternative" to what some considered an "invasion" of Britain by American culture, in the form of "rock music, horror comics, television, teenage culture, delinquency, and [[Walt Disney|Disney]]".{{Sfnp|Rudd|2004|p=112|ps=none}}
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Some librarians felt that Blyton's restricted use of language, a conscious product of her teaching background, was prejudicial to an appreciation of more literary qualities. In a scathing article published in ''Encounter'' in 1958, the journalist [[Colin Welch]] remarked that it was "hard to see how a diet of Miss Blyton could help with the [[Eleven-Plus exam|11-plus]] or even with the Cambridge English [[Tripos]]",{{R|ODNB}} but reserved his harshest criticism for Blyton's Noddy, describing him as an "unnaturally priggish ... sanctimonious ... witless, spiritless, snivelling, sneaking doll."{{Sfnp|Briggs|Butts|Orville Grenby|2008|p=265|ps=none}}
The author and educational psychologist [[Nicholas Tucker]] notes that it was common to see Blyton cited as people's favourite or least favourite author according to their age, and argues that her books create an "encapsulated world for young readers that simply dissolves with age, leaving behind only memories of excitement and strong identification".{{Sfnp|Tucker|1990|p=116|ps=none}} Fred Inglis considers Blyton's books to be technically easy to read, but to also be "emotionally and cognitively easy". He mentions that the psychologist Michael Woods believed that Blyton was different from many other older authors writing for children in that she seemed untroubled by presenting them with a world that differed from reality. Woods surmised that Blyton "was a child, she thought as a child, and wrote as a child ... the basic feeling is essentially pre-adolescent ... Enid Blyton has no moral dilemmas ... Inevitably Enid Blyton was labelled by rumour a child-hater. If true, such a fact should come as no surprise to us, for as a child herself all other children can be nothing but rivals for her
===Accusations of racism, xenophobia and sexism===
Accusations of racism in Blyton's books were first made by [[Lena Jeger]] in a ''[[The Guardian|Guardian]]'' article published in 1966. In the context of discussing possible moves to restrict publications inciting racial hatred, Jeger was critical of Blyton's ''The Little Black Doll'', originally published in 1937.<ref>Lena Jeger, 'In Large Print', London ''Guardian'' 24 May 1966 p. 18.</ref><ref>{{Cite web|title=Enid Blyton's Jolly Story Book (List of Contents)|url=https://www.enidblytonsociety.co.uk/book-details.php?id=563&title=Enid+Blyton%27s+Jolly+Story+Book|website=The Enid Blyton Society|access-date=15 January 2022}}</ref> Sambo, the black doll of the title, is hated by his owner and other toys owing to his "ugly black face", and runs away. A shower of "magic rain" washes his face clean, after which he is welcomed back home with his now pink face.{{Sfnp|Druce|1992|p=43|ps=none}} [[Jamaica Kincaid]] also considers the Noddy books to be "deeply racist" because of the blonde children and the black [[golliwog]]s.{{Sfnp|Bouson|2012|p=207|ps=none}} In Blyton's 1944 novel ''[[The Island of Adventure]]'', a black servant named Jo-Jo is very intelligent, but is particularly cruel to the children.{{Sfnp|Edwards|2007|p=257|ps=none}}
Accusations of xenophobia were also made. As George Greenfield observed, "Enid was very much part of that [[interwar period|between the wars]] middle class which believed that foreigners were untrustworthy or funny or sometimes both".{{Sfnp|Greenfield|1995|p=113|ps=none}} The publisher [[Macmillan Publishers|Macmillan]] conducted an internal assessment of Blyton's ''The Mystery That Never Was'', submitted to them at the height of her fame in 1960. The review was carried out by the author and books editor [[Phyllis Hartnoll]], in whose view "There is a faint but unattractive touch of old-fashioned xenophobia in the author's attitude to the thieves; they are 'foreign' ... and this seems to be regarded as sufficient to explain their criminality
Blyton's depictions of boys and girls are considered by many critics to be sexist.{{R|Dixon}}{{Sfnp|Fisher|1986|p=233}} In a ''Guardian'' article published in 2005 Lucy Mangan proposed that ''[[The Famous Five]]'' series depicts a power struggle between Julian, Dick and George (Georgina), in which the female characters either act like boys or are talked down to, as when Dick lectures George: "it's really time you gave up thinking you're as good as a boy".{{R|Mangan}}
===Revisions to later editions===
To address criticisms levelled at Blyton's work, some later editions have been altered to reflect more politically progressive attitudes towards issues such as race, gender, violence between young persons, the treatment of children by adults, and legal changes in Britain as to what is allowable for young children to do (e.g. purchasing fireworks) in the years since the stories were originally written
''[[The Faraway Tree]]'''s Dame Slap, who made regular use of corporal punishment, was changed to Dame Snap, who no longer did so, and the names of Dick and Fanny in the same series (respective slang terms in some dialects for male and female genitals) were changed to Rick and Frannie.{{R|BradburyTelegraph}}<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.freerangekids.com/when-dick-and-fannie-became-rick-and-frannie-guest-post/ |title="When Dick and Fannie became Rick and Frannie" – Guest Post! |last= Browne |first=Kate |date=29 May 2012 |website=Free-Range Kids |access-date=30 July 2024}}</ref> Characters in the [[Malory Towers]] and [[St. Clare's (series)|St. Clare's]] series are no longer spanked or threatened with a spanking, but are instead scolded. References to George's short hair making her look like a boy were removed in revisions to ''[[Five on a Hike Together]]'', reflecting the idea that girls need not have long hair to be considered feminine or normal
In 2010 [[Hodder & Stoughton|Hodder]], the publisher of the Famous Five series, announced its intention to update the language used in the books, of which it sold more than half a million copies a year. The changes, which Hodder described as "subtle", mainly affect the dialogue rather than the narrative. For instance, "school tunic" becomes "uniform", "mother and father" and "mother and daddy" (this latter one used by young female characters and deemed sexist) become "mum and dad",{{R|Horn2010}} and "bathing" is replaced by "swimming"
==Stage, film and television adaptations==
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There have also been several film and television adaptations of the Famous Five: by the [[Children's Film Foundation]] in [[Five on a Treasure Island (film)|1957]] and [[Five Have a Mystery to Solve (film)|1964]], [[Southern Television]] in [[The Famous Five (1970s TV series)|1978–79]], and [[Zenith Productions]] in [[The Famous Five (1990s TV series)|1995–97]].{{R|ODNB}} The series was also adapted for the German film ''[[Famous Five (film)|Fünf Freunde]]'', directed by Mike Marzuk and released in 2011.{{R|FestivalFocus}}
[[St. Clare's (series)|St. Clare's]] was adapted into a 1991 anime television series, ''[[Mischievous Twins: The Tales of St. Clare's]]'', by [[Tokyo Movie Shinsha]].<ref>
[[The Comic Strip]], a group of British comedians, produced two extreme parodies of the Famous Five for [[Channel 4]] television: ''[[Five Go Mad in Dorset]]'', broadcast in 1982,{{Efn|The Comic Strip's ''Five Go Mad in Dorset'' contains the first occurrence of a phrase wrongly attributed to Blyton, "lashings of ginger beer".{{Sfnp|Rudd|2004|p=114|ps=none}}}} and ''Five Go Mad on Mescalin'', broadcast the following year.{{R|EBSChrono}} A third in the series, ''Five Go to Rehab'', was broadcast on [[Sky (UK and Ireland)|Sky]] in 2012.{{R|TelegraphRehab}}
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* [http://www.sevenstories.org.uk/collection/collection-highlights/enid-blyton The Enid Blyton Collection at Seven Stories] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181020020033/https://www.sevenstories.org.uk/collection/collection-highlights/enid-blyton |date=20 October 2018 }}
* [http://blytonsevenstories.wordpress.com/ Seven Stories' Enid Blyton Blog]
* {{
* [https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000cmrz Great Lives – Novelist Enid Blyton]
* [https://www.enidblytonsociety.co.uk/ The Enid Blyton Society]
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[[Category:People from East Dulwich]]
[[Category:People from Hampstead]]
[[Category:Writers from the London Borough of Southwark]]
[[Category:British women mystery writers]]
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