Enid Blyton

Enid Mary Blyton (August 11 1897 – November 28 1968) was a popular and prolific British children's writer. She was one of the most successful children's storytellers of the twentieth century.

She is noted for numerous series of books based on recurring characters and designed for different age groups. Her books have enjoyed popular success in many parts of the world, and have sold over 400 million copies. By one measure, Blyton is the sixth most popular author worldwide: over 3400 translations of her books are available in 2007 according to UNESCO's Index Translationum; she is behind Lenin and almost equal to Shakespeare. One of her most widely known characters is Noddy, intended for beginning readers. However, her main forte is the young readers' novels, where children ride out their own adventures with minimal adult help. In this genre, particularly popular series include the Famous Five (consisting of 21 novels, 1942 – 1963, based on four children and their dog), the Five Find-Outers and Dog, (15 novels, 1943-1961, where five children regularly outwit the local police) as well as the Secret Seven (15 novels, 1949 – 1963, a society of seven children who solve various mysteries).

Her work involves children's adventure stories, and fantasy, sometimes involving magic. Her books were and still are enormously popular in Britain, Malta, India, Pakistan, New Zealand, Singapore, and Australia, and as translations, in former Yugoslavia, Japan, and across most of the globe. Her work has been translated into nearly 90 languages.

Personal life

Blyton was born on August 11, 1897 at 354 Lordship Lane, East Dulwich, London, the eldest child of Thomas Carey Blyton (1870 – 1920), a salesman of cutlery, and Theresa Mary (1874 – 1950). Blyton had two younger brothers, Hanly (b. 1899), and Carey (b. 1902), who were born after the family had moved to the nearby suburb of Beckenham. From 1907 to 1915, Blyton was educated at St. Christopher's School in Beckenham, where she excelled, leaving as head girl. She enjoyed physical activities along with the academic work. Her teenage ambition to become a writer was discouraged when several hundred pieces were rejected by publishers.

Blyton was a talented pianist, and her parents had hopes that she might play professionally. Instead, Blyton gave up her musical studies to teach. She taught for five years at Bickley, Surbiton and Chessington, and wrote in her spare time. Her first book, Child Whispers, a collection of poems, was published in 1922.

On 28 August 1924 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 they moved to a house in Beaconsfield, named Green Hedges by Blyton's readers following a competition in 'Sunny Stories'. They had two children—Gillian Mary Baverstock (15 July 1931 – 24 June 2007) and Imogen Mary Smallwood (born 27 October 1935).

In the mid-1930s Blyton had an experience of a spiritual crisis, but she decided against converting to Roman Catholicism from the Church of England because she had felt it was "too constricting." Although she rarely attended church services, she saw that her two daughters were baptised into the Anglican faith and went to the local Sunday School.

By 1939 her marriage to Pollock encountered trouble, 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. Pollock remarried and had little contact with his daughters thereafter. 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.

Blyton's husband died in 1967. During the following months, she became increasingly ill. Afflicted by Alzheimer's disease, 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, aged 71 and was cremated at Golders Green.

Literary career

Blyton wrote hundreds of books for young and older children: novels, story collections and some non-fiction. An estimate puts her total book publication at around 800 titles, in addition to decades of magazine writing. It is said that at one point in her career she regularly produced 10,000 words a day.

The early 1920s saw her career take off, with the publication of Child Whispers (1922) and Real Fairies: Poems (1923). By 1925, Blyton was writing an average of four to five thousand words daily, not only for her books for children, but also for educational journals and the Morning Post, a London newspaper. Among her magazine efforts was her work for the popular Sunny Stories for Little Folks, which she also edited from 1926 to 1952.

The publication of Adventures of the Wishing Chair in 1937 and its subsequent popularity cemented the style of fantasy that Blyton employed in her works during this period. The fantasy was simplistic and humorous, markedly different from the complex and more accomplished work of J. R. R. Tolkien, her contemporary whose own novel The Hobbit was published the same year.

Also notable was The Secret Island, published the following year. Like Adventures of the Wishing Chair, the book was released after first appearing in Sunny Stories. The Secret Island belonged to another genre that Blyton dominated—that of the adventure story. Sequels followed, with The Secret of Spiggy Holes in 1940 and The Secret Mountain published in 1941.

During the war, most other writers were dormant, as restrictions on paper limited the literary output, but the popularity of Blyton’s work meant that she could continue to be published. For a few titles she began using the pseudonym "Mary Pollock," combining her middle name and her first married name. Even without the Blyton stamp, these works were just as successful. Her wartime contributions also included patriotic advice in her magazine columns. Even in her 1941 book, The Adventurous Four, Blyton employed strong patriotic themes and featured the uncovering of a German submarine base.

Blyton also made contributions to the girl’s school story genre, with The Naughtiest Girl in the School (1940) and its sequels. The second book of the series, The Twins at St. Clare’s (1941) was even serialized as a Japanese animated cartoon on television in 1991.

Blyton’s most famous series, The Famous Five, was introduced in 1942. The Five was made up of a familiar team of boys and girls. They included Julian, the rather condescending leader; Dick, often the one in Julian’s shadow; the tomboy George, whose real name was Georgina; Anne, George’s opposite—the stereotypically weak, inferior girl; and Timmy the dog.

By the late 1940s, Blyton was at the height of her dominance of popular fiction, continuing to produce book after book for more than twenty publishers in Britain. In 1949, she was commissioned by David White of the Sampson Low publishing house to write stories to be used with the artwork of Harmsen Van der Beek. This venture led to one of her most successful series, the ‘Noddy’ books, which despite their popularity are the most critically derided of Blyton’s books. Critics have found fault with Noddy, who, as the title character, has few redeeming qualities. “Noddy language” has become a term used to describe banal idiocy. Blyton’s tendency to employ rather racist devices is also apparent in the Noddy books, in which the ‘black’ and ‘bad’ are equated.

By 1957 Blyton became ill and her output slowed dramatically. The last volumes in her most famous series were published in 1963. Many books still appeared after that, but were mainly story books made up from re-cycled work.

Controversies and revisions

Blyton's status as a bestselling author is in spite of disapproval of her works from various perspectives, which has led to altered reprints of the books and withdrawals or “bans” from libraries.

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 United States in the 1930s.

A 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. Her response is said to be that she was not interested in the views of critics aged over 12.

Dated attitudes and altered reprints

The books are very much of their time, particularly the 1950s titles. They present Britain's class system — that is to say, "rough" versus "decent". Many of Blyton's children's books similarly popularized negative stereotypes regarding gender, race, and class.

Modern reprints of some books have had changes made, such as the replacement of golliwogs with teddy bears or goblins. This response from the publishers to contemporary attitudes on racial stereotypes 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 the case of a story, The Little Black Doll, (the doll wanted to be pink) and which was turned on its head in a reprint. Also removed in deference to modern ethical attitudes are many casual references to slaves and to corporal punishment. Although the books are often stauchly defended by modern conservatives ^{[citation needed]}, Blyton had come under criticism in this area during her working lifetime; a story of hers was rejected in 1960 with the publisher’s criticisms including that “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.”

An element of sexism is noted in some of her books, such as in this Guardian article, which suggested the Famous Five depicts a power struggle between Julian, Dick and George(ina), with the female characters either acting like boys or being heavily put-upon. It has been suggested that a new edition of the book will "address" these issues through alterations.. In the Secret Seven books, the girls are deliberately excluded from tasks such as investigating the villains’ hideouts—in Go Ahead, Secret Seven, it is directly stated "'Certainly not,' said Peter, sounding very grown-up all of a sudden. 'This is a man's job, exploring that coal-hole'". In the Famous Five this is less often the case, but in Five On a Hike Together, Julian gives similar orders to George – “You may look like a boy and behave like a boy, but you're a girl all the same. And like it or not, girls have got to be taken care of”. Both of these involve situations that would in reality be dangerous for any child, and where clear gender roles are set out with boys in charge and girls protected, possibly sending out a message for more realistic scenarios.

Selected bibliography

• 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 Mistletoe Farm series
• The Mystery series (also known as the Five Find-Outers)
• The Naughtiest Girl series
• The Noddy books
• The Amelia Jane short stories
• The Secret Seven series
• The St. Clare's series
• The Wishing-Chair series
• The Willow Farm Series

Legacy

• Blyton's books have sold more than 400 million copies[1]
• Her books still continue to sell more than 8 to 10 million copies worldwide
• More than a million Famous Five books are sold worldwide each year
• Her books have been translated into more than 90 different languages
• The Magic Faraway Tree was voted no. 66 in the BBC's Big Read.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Hunt, Peter, University of Wales. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Volume 160: British Children's Writers, 1914-1960. A Bruccoli Clark Layman Book. Edited by Donald R. Hettinga, Calvin College and Gary D. Schmidt, Calvin College. The Gale Group, 1996. pp. 50-71.

External links

• The Enid Blyton Society
• "Golliwogg.co.uk" An independent guide to Golliwogs - "Golliwogs & Racism"

Sources

File:Biography.jpeg

Enid Blyton Biography

• Enid Blyton (1952) The Story of My Life
• Barbara Stoney (1974) Enid Blyton, 1992 The Enid Blyton Biography, Hodder, London ISBN 0-340-58348-7 (paperback) ISBN 0-340-16514-6
• Mason Willey (1993) Enid Blyton: A Bibliography of First Editions and Other Collectible Books ISBN 0-9521284-0-3
• 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

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