Enid Blyton
Enid Mary Blyton was an English children's writer. She is widely regarded as one of the most successful and prolific writers of all time, particularly in the realm of children's literature. Blyton's books have been worldwide bestsellers since the 1930s, selling more than 600 million copies, and have been translated into ninety languages. As of June 2019, Blyton was the fourth-most translated author. She wrote on a wide range of topics, including education, natural history, fantasy, mystery, and biblical narratives. She is best remembered for her Noddy, Famous Five, Secret Seven, the Five Find-Outers, and Malory Towers books, although she also wrote many others, including St. Clare's, The Naughtiest Girl, and The Faraway Tree series.
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 Adventures of the Wishing-Chair and The Enchanted Wood, 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 vehemently denied.
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 have continued 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, 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 only daughter and eldest of three children, to Thomas Carey Blyton, a cutlery salesman and his wife Theresa Mary. Enid's younger brothers, Hanly and Carey, were born after the family had moved to a semi-detached house in Beckenham, then a village in Kent. A few months after her birth, Enid almost died from whooping cough but was nursed back to health by her father, whom she adored. 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". 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. Enid was devastated when her father left the family shortly after her 13th birthday to live with another woman, with whom he had more children. Enid and her mother did not have a good relationship; in fact Enid despised her mother so much that after she left home, she never saw her mother again and she gave people the impression that her mother was dead. Enid did not attend either of her parents' funerals.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. 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. 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.
File:Seckford Hall - geograph.org.uk - 1000225.jpg|thumb|right|Seckford Hall in Woodbridge, Suffolk, was an inspiration to Blyton with its haunted room, secret passageway, and sprawling gardens.
Blyton's father taught her to play the piano, which she mastered well enough for him to believe she might follow in his sister May's footsteps and become a professional musician. Blyton considered enrolling at the Guildhall School of Music, but decided she was better suited to becoming a writer. After finishing school, in 1915, as head girl, she moved out of the family home to live with her friend Mary Attenborough, before going to stay with George and Emily Hunt at Seckford Hall, near Woodbridge, in Suffolk. Seckford Hall, with its allegedly haunted room and secret passageway, provided inspiration for her later writing. At Woodbridge Congregational Church, Blyton met Ida Hunt, who taught at Ipswich High School and suggested she train there as a teacher. Blyton was introduced to the children at the nursery school and, recognising her natural affinity with them, enrolled in a National Froebel Union teacher training course at the school in September 1916. By this time, she had nearly terminated all contact with her family.
Blyton's manuscripts were rejected by publishers on many occasions, which only made her more determined to succeed, saying, "It is partly the struggle that helps you so much, that gives you determination, character, self-reliance –all things that help in any profession or trade, and most certainly in writing." In March 1916, her first poems were published in Nash's Magazine. She completed her teacher training course in December 1918 and, the following month, obtained a teaching appointment at Bickley Park School, a small, independent establishment for boys in Bickley in Bromley, Kent. Two months later, Blyton received a teaching certificate with distinctions in zoology and principles of education; first class in botany, geography, practice and history of education, child hygiene, and classroom teaching; and second class in literature and elementary mathematics. In 1920, she moved to Southernhay, in Hook Road Surbiton, as nursery governess to the four sons of architect Horace Thompson and his wife Gertrude, with whom Blyton spent four happy years. With the shortage of area schools, neighbouring children soon joined her charges, and a small school developed at the house.
Early writing career
In 1920, Blyton moved to Chessington in Surrey 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". Publications such as The Londoner, Home Weekly and The Bystander began to show an interest in her short stories and poems.Blyton's first book, Child Whispers, a 24-page collection of poems, was published in 1922. Its illustrator, Enid's schoolfriend Phyllis Chase collaborated on several of her early works. Also in that year, Blyton began writing in annuals for Cassell and George Newnes, and her first piece of writing, "Peronel and his Pot of Glue", was accepted for publication in Teachers' World. Further boosting her success, in 1923, her poems appeared alongside those of Rudyard Kipling, Walter de la Mare, and G. K. Chesterton in a special issue of Teachers' World. Blyton's educational texts were influential in the 1920s and 1930s, with her most sizable being the three-volume The Teacher's Treasury, the six-volume Modern Teaching, the eight-volume Pictorial Knowledge, and the four-volume Modern Teaching in the Infant School.
In July 1923, Blyton published Real Fairies, a collection of thirty-three poems written especially for the book with the exception of "Pretending", which had appeared earlier in Punch magazine. The following year, she published The Enid Blyton Book of Fairies, illustrated by Horace J. Knowles, and in 1926 the Book of Brownies. Several books of plays appeared in 1927, including A Book of Little Plays and The Play's the Thing with the illustrator Alfred Bestall.
In the 1930s, Blyton developed an interest in writing stories related to various myths, including those of ancient Greece and Rome; The Knights of the Round Table, Tales of Ancient Greece and Tales of Robin Hood were published in 1930. In Tales of Ancient Greece Blyton retold 16 well-known ancient Greek myths, but used Latin rather than Greek names and invented conversations between characters. The Adventures of Odysseus, Tales of the Ancient Greeks and Persians and Tales of the Romans followed in 1934.
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;, her first serial story and first full-length book, Adventures of the Wishing-Chair, followed in 1937. The Enchanted Wood, the first book in the Faraway Tree series, published in 1939, is about a magic tree inspired by the Norse mythology that had fascinated Blyton as a child. According to Blyton's daughter Gillian, the inspiration for the magic tree came from "thinking up a story one day, and suddenly she was walking in the enchanted wood and found the tree. In her imagination, she climbed up through the branches and met Moon-Face, Silky, the Saucepan Man and the rest of the characters. She had all she needed." As in the Wishing-Chair series, these fantasy books typically involve children being transported into a magical world in which they meet fairies, goblins, elves, pixies and other mythological creatures.Blyton's first full-length adventure novel, The Secret Island, was published in 1938, featuring the characters of Jack, Mike, Peggy and Nora. Described by 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 Secret series. The following year Blyton released her first book in the Circus series and her initial book in the Amelia Jane series, Naughty Amelia Jane! According to Gillian, the main character was based on a large handmade doll given to her by her mother on her third birthday.
During the 1940s, Blyton became a prolific author, her success enhanced by her "marketing, publicity and branding that was far ahead of its time". In 1940, Blyton published two books – Three Boys and a Circus and Children of Kidillin – under the pseudonym of Mary Pollock, in addition to the eleven published under her name that year. So popular were Pollock's books that one reviewer was prompted to observe that "Enid Blyton had better look to her laurels". But Blyton's readers were not so easily deceived and many complained about the subterfuge to her and her publisher, with the result that all six books published under the name of Mary Pollock – two in 1940 and four in 1943 – were reissued under Blyton's name. Later in 1940, Blyton published the first of her boarding school story books and the first novel in the Naughtiest Girl series, The Naughtiest Girl in the School, which followed the exploits of the mischievous schoolgirl Elizabeth Allen at the fictional Whyteleafe School. The first of her six novels in the St. Clare's series, The Twins at St. Clare's, appeared the following year, featuring the twin sisters Patricia and Isabel O'Sullivan.
In 1942, Blyton released the first book in the Mary Mouse series, Mary Mouse and the Dolls' House, about a mouse exiled from her mousehole who becomes a maid at a dolls' house. Twenty-three books in the series were produced between 1942 and 1964; 10,000 copies were sold in 1942 alone. The same year, Blyton published the first novel in the Famous Five series, Five on a Treasure Island, with illustrations by Eileen Soper. Its popularity resulted in twenty-one books between then and 1963, and the characters of Julian, Dick, Anne, George and Timmy the dog became household names in Britain. Matthew Grenby, author of Children's Literature, states that the five were involved with "unmasking hardened villains and solving serious crimes", although the novels were "hardly 'hard-boiled' thrillers". Blyton based the character of Georgina, a tomboy she described as "short-haired, freckled, sturdy, and snub-nosed" and "bold and daring, hot-tempered and loyal", on herself.
Blyton had an interest in biblical narratives and retold Old and New Testament stories. The Land of Far-Beyond is a Christian parable along the lines of John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress, with contemporary children as the main characters. In 1943, she published The Children's Life of Christ, a collection of fifty-nine short stories related to the life of Jesus, with her slant on popular biblical stories, from the Nativity and the Three Wise Men through to the trial, the crucifixion and the resurrection. Tales from the Bible was published the following year, followed by The Boy with the Loaves and Fishes in 1948.
The first book in Blyton's Five Find-Outers series, The Mystery of the Burnt Cottage, was published in 1943, as was the second book in the Faraway series, The Magic Faraway Tree, which in 2003 was voted 66th in the BBC's Big Read poll to find the UK's favourite book. Several of Blyton's works during this period have seaside themes; John Jolly by the Sea, a picture book intended for younger readers, was published in a booklet format by Evans Brothers. Other books with a maritime theme include The Secret of Cliff Castle and Smuggler Ben, both attributed to Mary Pollock in 1943; The Island of Adventure, the first in the Adventure series of eight novels from 1944 onwards; and various novels of the Famous Five series such as Five on a Treasure Island, Five on Kirrin Island Again and Five Go Down to the Sea.
Capitalising on her success, with a loyal and ever-growing readership, Blyton produced a new edition of many of her series such as the Famous Five, the Five Find-Outers and St. Clare's every year in addition to many other novels, short stories and books. In 1946, Blyton launched the first in the Malory Towers series of six books based around the schoolgirl Darrell Rivers, First Term at Malory Towers, which became extremely popular, particularly with girls.