Enid Blyton: Difference between revisions

| birth_name = Enid Mary Blyton

| birth_date = {{Birth date|1897|8|11|df=y}}

| death_date = {{Death date and age|1968|11|28|1897|8|11|df=y}}

| resting_place = [[Golders Green Crematorium]]

| occupation = {{cslist|Novelist|poet|teacher|short story writer}}

| website =

}}

 

 

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.

 

 

==Early life and education==

 

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}}

 

==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}}

 

==Commercial success==

===New series: 1934–1948===

 

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}}

 

[[File:Beaconsfield Themed Fencing - geograph.org.uk - 1386378.jpg|thumb|right|Blyton's characters [[Noddy (character)|Noddy]] and [[Big Ears (character)|Big Ears]]]]

 

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}}

 

 

===Final works===

 

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}}

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}}

 

 

 

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}}

==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}}

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}}

 

 

 

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}}

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}}

 

 

==Critical backlash==

 

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}}

 

 

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}}

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}}

 

 

===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}}

 

 

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===

 

 

 

==Stage, film and television adaptations==

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}}

 

 

[[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}}

* [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]

[[Category:People from East Dulwich]]

[[Category:People from Hampstead]]

[[Category:British women mystery writers]]