Enid Blyton Children's Books

Children's Classics - An Australian business specialising in children's classic, rare, and vintage books.

 

Titles include:

Little Golden Books; Eloise Wilkin, Esther Wilkin, Richard Scarry, Walt Disney, Sesame Street,

Grug by Ted Prior,

Disney Classics, Hannah Montana, High School Musical, Little Golden Books,

Dr. Seuss,

Emily Rodda; Deltora Quest, Rowan of Rin, Rondo, Fairy Realm, Squeak Street,

Roald Dahl,

A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket,

Beatrix Potter The Peter Rabbit Library,

Artemis Fowl, by Eoin Colfer,

Inheritance Cycle by Christopher Paolini.

How Did Enid Blyton Become a Writer?

In her autobiography, The Story of My Life (1952), Enid Blyton says that, from an early age, she "liked making up stories better than I liked doing anything else." As a child she would go to bed at night and stories would flood into her mind "all mixed-up, rather like dreams are, but yet each story had its own definite thread-its beginning and middle and ending." Enid Blyton did not realise at the time that that was unusual, remarking in a letter to psychologist Peter McKellar on 15th February 1953: "I thought all children had the same 'night stories' and was amazed when one day I found they hadn't." She described her "night stories" as "all kinds of imaginings in story form," saying: "Because of this imagining I wanted to write-to put down what I had seen and felt and heard in my imagination."

The young Enid was keen to develop her writing and story-telling skills. She told stories to her brothers, made up her own rhymes based on the rhythm and rhyme-scheme of popular nursery-rhymes, kept a diary, wrote letters to real and imaginary recipients, entered literary competitions and paid great attention in English lessons at school. She also read widely. As well as fiction and poetry, she read biographies of famous authors and borrowed books from the library on the Art of Writing.

The advice Enid Blyton gives in The Story of My Life to children who want to write is: "Fill your mind with all kinds of interesting things-the more you have in it, the more will come out of it. Nothing ever comes out of your mind that hasn't already been put into it in some form or other. It may come out changed, re-arranged, polished, shining, almost unrecognizable-but nevertheless it was you who put it there first of all. Your thoughts, your actions, your reading, your sense of humour, everything gets packed into your mind, and if you have an imagination, what a wonderful assortment it will have to choose from!"

Enid began submitting her work to publishers when she was in her teens, but at that stage she received countless rejection slips. However, that only made her all the more determined to persevere with her writing: "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." As we know, Enid Blyton went on to achieve phenomenal success, beginning with the publication of magazine articles and poetry when she was in her twenties.

From Where Did Enid Blyton Get Her Ideas For Her Stories?

Enid Blyton maintained that the gates of her imagination were always ready to swing open at the slightest touch. All the things she had experienced in her life provided her with material for her stories. These life experiences:

"... sank down into my 'under-mind' and simmered there, waiting for the time to come when they would be needed again for a book-changed, transmuted, made perfect, finely-wrought-quite different from when they were packed away.

And yet the essence of them was exactly the same. Something had been at work, adapting, altering, deleting here and there, polishing brightly-but still the heart, the essence of the original thing was there, and I could almost always recognize it."

In a letter to Peter McKellar on 26th February 1953 she elaborated on this, saying that things she had seen on holidays, such as islands, castles and caves, would pop up frequently in her stories as she wrote:

"These things come up time and again in my stories, changed, sometimes almost unrecognisable-and then I see a detail that makes me say-yes-that's one of the Cheddar Caves, surely! Characters also remind me of people I have met-I think my imagination contains all the things I have ever seen or heard, things my conscious mind has long forgotten-and they have all been jumbled about till a light penetrates into the mass, and a happening here or an object there is taken out, transmuted, or formed into something that takes a natural and rightful place in the story-or I may recognise it-or I may not-I don't think that I use anything I have not seen or experienced-I don't think I could. I don't think one can take out of one's mind more than one puts in... Our books are facets of ourselves."

EARLY FAMILY LIFE

Enid Mary Blyton was born on 11th August 1897 at 354 Lordship Lane, a two-bedroom flat above a shop in East Dulwich, South London. Shortly after her birth her parents moved to Beckenham in Kent and it was there, in a number of different houses over the years, that Enid Blyton spent her childhood. She had two younger brothers—Hanly, born in 1899, and Carey, born in 1902.

ENID AND HER FATHER, THOMAS CAREY BLYTON

Enid's father, Thomas, was a cutlery salesman as a young man. He then joined his uncle's firm selling Yorkshire cloth and, later still, set up his own business as a clothing wholesaler. He and his daughter had a close, loving relationship—both had dark hair and alert brown eyes, and shared an appetite for knowledge and a zest for life. Together they enjoyed nature rambles, gardening, the theatre, art, music and literature. When Enid had whooping cough as a baby, and was not expected to live till morning, her father refused to accept the doctor's opinion and sat up all night with her, cradling her and willing her to survive.

Enid learnt a lot from her father, especially about nature. In her autobiography, The Story of My Life (1952), she wrote:

"...my father loved the countryside, loved flowers and birds and wild animals, and knew more about them than anyone I had ever met. And what was more he was willing to take me with him on his expeditions, and share his love and his knowledge with me!

That was marvellous to me. It's the very best way of learning about nature if you can go for walks with someone who really knows."

Thomas also taught his young daughter lessons that would stand her in good stead in daily life. When she wanted to plant seeds in her own patch of garden he made a bargain with her, saying:

"If you want anything badly, you have to work for it. I will give you enough money to buy your own seeds, if you earn it. I want my bicycle cleaned—cleaned well, too. And I want the weeds cleared from that bed over there. If the work is done properly, it is worth sixpence to me, and that will buy you six penny packets of seeds."

Enid appreciated the seeds, and the flowers which sprang up from them, all the more for having been made to work for them. Part of the pleasure and value lay in the fact that she had earned them for herself.

ENID AND HER MOTHER, THERESA MARY BLYTON (NEE HARRISON)

Although she adored her father, Enid's relationship with her mother, Theresa, was more turbulent. Theresa was a tall, raven-haired woman whose life revolved around housework. She was not creative and artistic like Thomas, and did not share his interests. She expected her daughter to help with household chores but gave her sons a lot more freedom, which Enid, who was not very domesticated, resented. Stern and house-proud, Theresa did not approve of Enid devoting so much time to nature-walks, reading and other hobbies when there was work to be done in the house. Neither did she understand why her husband encouraged their daughter in such activities.

FIRST SCHOOL

Enid began her schooldays at a small school run by two sisters in a house called Tresco, almost opposite the Blyton home. As an adult, Enid Blyton said about the school:

"I remember everything about it—the room, the garden, the pictures on the wall, the little chairs, the dog there, and the lovely smells that used to creep out from the kitchen into our classroom when we sat doing dictation. I remember how we used to take biscuits for our mid-morning lunch and 'swap' them with one another—and how we used to dislike one small boy who was clever at swapping a small biscuit for a big one."

Enid's days at Tresco were happy. She was a bright girl, blessed with a good memory, and she shone at art and nature study, though she struggled with mathematics.

CHILDHOOD GAMES

Games that Enid played as a child included Red Indians, Burglars and Policemen, building dens and playing with tops, hoops and marbles. Indoors she played card games, Snakes and Ladders, Draughts and Chess. Her father thought that all young children should learn to play Chess because "... if they have any brains it will train them to think clearly, quickly and to plan things a long way ahead. And if they haven't any brains it will make the best of those they have!"

BOOKS THAT ENID READ AS A GIRL

Enid loved reading. Among the books she read were Anna Sewell's Black Beauty, Charles Kingsley's The Water Babies and Louisa M. Alcott's Little Women. She said of the characters in Little Women:

"Those were real children... 'When I grow up I will write books about real children,' I thought. 'That's the kind of book I like best. That's the kind of book I would know how to write.'"

Enid Blyton enjoyed myths and legends too, and poetry and annuals, and magazines like Strand Magazine and Punch. She was fascinated by Arthur Mee's Children's Encyclopaedia:

"It gave me my thirst for knowledge of all kinds, and taught me as much as ever I learnt at school."

Grimm's fairy-tales she considered "cruel and frightening" and, although she liked Hans Christian Andersen's stories, some of them were "too sad." Among her favourite books were Lewis Carroll's "Alice" books and R. M. Ballantyne's The Coral Island, but the one she loved best of all, and read at least a dozen times, was The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald. What appealed to her "wasn't so much the story as the strange 'feel' of the tale, the 'atmosphere' as we call it. It hung over me for a very long time, and gave me pleasant shivers."

SENIOR SCHOOL

In 1907 Enid Blyton became a pupil at St. Christopher's School for Girls in Beckenham. She was not a boarder, like so many of the characters in her books, but a day-girl. Intelligent, popular and full of fun, she threw herself wholeheartedly into school life. During her time at St. Christopher's she organised concerts, played practical jokes, became tennis champion and captain of the lacrosse team, and was awarded prizes in various subjects, especially English composition. In her final two years she was appointed Head Girl.

Outside school she and two of her friends, Mary Attenborough and Mirabel Davis, created a magazine called Dab, for which Enid wrote short stories. The title of the magazine was formed from the initials of the contributors' surnames.

Enid's first holiday abroad in 1913 was to stay with one of her French teachers, Mlle. Louise Bertraine, at her home in Annecy, France.

EARLY WRITING

Deprived of Thomas's support and inspiration, Enid was now more than ever at the mercy of her mother, with whom she did not see eye to eye. To assuage her unhappiness she took to locking herself in her bedroom and writing compulsively, setting a pattern which was to be repeated in adulthood. She had a vivid imagination and had known for some time that she wanted to be a writer, and now she spent every spare minute honing her talent. Her mother despaired of her, dismissing her work as mere "scribbling." Enid sent off numerous stories and poems to magazines in the hope that they would be published but, except for one poem which was printed by Arthur Mee in his magazine when she was fourteen, she had no luck at this stage, receiving hundreds of rejection slips. Her mother considered her efforts a "waste of time and money" but Enid was encouraged by her schoolfriend Mary's aunt, Mabel Attenborough, who had become a good friend and confidante.

SUCCESS AS A WRITER

Enid persevered with her writing and, in the early 1920s, began to achieve success. Stories and articles were accepted for publication by various periodicals, including Teacher's World, and she also wrote verses for greetings cards. 1922 saw the publication of her first book, Child Whispers, a slim volume of poetry, and in 1923 a couple more books were published as well as over a hundred and twenty shorter pieces—stories, verses, reviews and plays.

EARLY WORK AND FIRST NOVEL

Enid Blyton worked on a number of educational books in the 1920s-30s, among other things, and in 1926 she began writing and editing a fortnightly magazine, Sunny Stories for Little Folks. It became a weekly publication in 1937 and changed its name to Enid Blyton's Sunny Stories, finally becoming Sunny Stories. What could be said to be Enid Blyton's first full-length novel, The Enid Blyton Book of Bunnies, was published in 1925 (it was later re-titled The Adventures of Binkle and Flip.) However, that book is episodic in nature, reading more like a collection of individual stories about two mischievous rabbits, and The Enid Blyton Book of Brownies, published in 1926, is perhaps more deserving of the title "first novel."

In 1927 Hugh persuaded Enid to start using a typewriter. Before that she had written her manuscripts in longhand. Hugh was instrumental in helping his wife establish herself as a writer by publishing her stories at Newnes and, almost certainly, by teaching her about contracts and the business side of her work.

MAJOR SERIES AND OTHER WRITING

Enid Blyton ceased writing her regular column for Teacher's World in 1945, after almost twenty-three years, giving her the opportunity to widen the range of her writing activities. Daughters Gillian and Imogen were both at boarding-school and she had begun most of her major series by then including the Secret series, the Famous Five books, the Find-Outers mysteries, the Adventure series, the St. Clare's books, the Cherry Tree/Willow Farm series and the Faraway Tree and Wishing Chair books. These were later to be joined by the Secret Seven books, the Barney (or "R") mysteries, the Malory Towers series and the Six Cousins books. Noddy made his first appearance in 1949 and by the mid-fifties there was a huge amount of Noddy-themed merchandise in the shops.

Altogether, Enid Blyton is believed to have written around 700 books (including collections of short stories) as well as magazines, articles and poems. She wrote an incredible variety of books for children aged about two to fourteen—adventure and mystery stories, school stories, circus and farm books, fantasy tales, fairy-tales, family stories, nursery stories, nature books, religious books, animal stories, poetry, plays and songs, as well as re-telling myths, legends and other traditional tales. She earned a fortune from her writing and in 1950 she set up her own limited company, Darrell Waters Ltd., to manage the financial side of things.

ENID BLYTON'S MAGAZINE

In 1952 Enid relinquished Sunny Stories after twenty-six years, launching her fortnightly Enid Blyton's Magazine in March 1953. She wrote all the contents herself except for the advertisements, using the magazine to mould her readership through her stories, editorials and news-pages, encouraging her child readers to be kind, helpful and responsible and impressing upon them that, if they used their initiative, they could do their bit and make a difference to society, whatever their age. Through the pages of her magazine she promoted four clubs which children could join—the Busy Bees (which helped animals), the Famous Five Club (which raised money for a children's home), the Sunbeam Society (which helped blind children) and the Magazine Club (which raised money for children who had spastic cerebral palsy.) Thousands of readers joined and Enid Blyton spoke proudly of the "army of children" who were helping her carry out the work she wanted to do.

Enid Blyton's Magazine folded in September 1959 as Enid wished to spend more time with Kenneth, who had retired from his work as a surgeon in 1957. By that time the four clubs had approximately 500,000 members between them and had raised about £35,000 in six years—an enormous amount of money in those days.

In her autobiography, The Story of My Life (1952), Enid Blyton says that, from an early age, she "liked making up stories better than I liked doing anything else." As a child she would go to bed at night and stories would flood into her mind "all mixed-up, rather like dreams are, but yet each story had its own definite thread-its beginning and middle and ending." Enid Blyton did not realise at the time that that was unusual, remarking in a letter to psychologist Peter McKellar on 15th February 1953: "I thought all children had the same 'night stories' and was amazed when one day I found they hadn't." She described her "night stories" as "all kinds of imaginings in story form," saying: "Because of this imagining I wanted to write-to put down what I had seen and felt and heard in my imagination."

The young Enid was keen to develop her writing and story-telling skills. She told stories to her brothers, made up her own rhymes based on the rhythm and rhyme-scheme of popular nursery-rhymes, kept a diary, wrote letters to real and imaginary recipients, entered literary competitions and paid great attention in English lessons at school. She also read widely. As well as fiction and poetry, she read biographies of famous authors and borrowed books from the library on the Art of Writing.

The advice Enid Blyton gives in The Story of My Life to children who want to write is: "Fill your mind with all kinds of interesting things-the more you have in it, the more will come out of it. Nothing ever comes out of your mind that hasn't already been put into it in some form or other. It may come out changed, re-arranged, polished, shining, almost unrecognizable-but nevertheless it was you who put it there first of all. Your thoughts, your actions, your reading, your sense of humour, everything gets packed into your mind, and if you have an imagination, what a wonderful assortment it will have to choose from!"

Enid began submitting her work to publishers when she was in her teens, but at that stage she received countless rejection slips. However, that only made her all the more determined to persevere with her writing: "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." As we know, Enid Blyton went on to achieve phenomenal success, beginning with the publication of magazine articles and poetry when she was in her twenties.

Enid Blyton typed out her stories while sitting in her study or in the garden, her typewriter perched on her knees. She did not learn to touch-type but used her two forefingers, still managing to type with speed and accuracy.

Enid explains in The Story of My Life that she did not plan a work of fiction before starting to write it. Often, she had no clear idea where the plot was heading. Instead, she simply allowed the story to unfold in her mind as she typed, relying on her fertile imagination rather than on conscious invention. She compared the process to viewing "a private cinema screen inside my head... and what I see, I write down." In a letter to Peter McKellar on 26th February 1953 she added: "But it's a 3-dimensional screen, complete with sound, smell and taste-and feeling!"

When Enid Blyton was beginning a new book, the characters would appear in her head first: "They stand there in my mind's eye and I can see them as clearly as I see you when I look at you. I can see if they are tall or short, dark or fair, fat or thin. And more than that, in some queer way I can see into their characters too. I know if they are kind or unkind, hot-tempered, generous, amusing or deceitful!" Then she would see the setting-a wood, perhaps-and would start to explore the place, feeling excited and curious. Once the characters and setting were established she would begin to type and the story would flow fluently from her fingertips, at an astonishing speed:

"It is as if I were watching a story being unfolded on a bright screen. Characters come and go, talk and laugh, things happen to them... the whole story sparkles on my private 'screen' inside my head, and I simply put down what I see and hear.

The story comes out complete and whole from beginning to end. I do not have to stop and think for one moment. If I tried to think out or invent the whole book, as some writers do, 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. People in my books make jokes I could never have thought of myself. I am merely a sightseer, a reporter, an interpreter, whatever you like to call me."

Her letter to Peter McKellar on 15th February 1953 makes a similar point about the process of writing:

"I don't know what anyone is going to say or do. I don't know what is going to happen. I am in the happy position of being able to write a story and read it for the first time, at one and the same moment... Sometimes a character makes a joke, a really funny one, that makes me laugh as I type it on my paper-and I think, 'Well, I couldn't have thought of that myself in a hundred years!' And then I think, 'Well, who did think of it then?'"

It is worth exploring in a little more detail Enid Blyton's apparent ability to simply open the sluice-gates of her imagination and let a story flood out, without any planning beforehand. Critics have naturally questioned her claim to be able to do that, and the subject deserves closer examination.

In Chapter 14 of The Story of My Life (1952) Enid Blyton takes us through the process of writing a book, giving The Enchanted Wood (1939) as an example. This is an odd choice, since several key elements of The Enchanted Wood (which, incidentally, was written thirteen years before The Story of My Life) had been used previously in earlier works. These elements may have suddenly sprung into her mind as she worked on The Enchanted Wood, but they were certainly not new creations. Enid ignores that, presenting some of these things as having popped into her head completely out of the blue as she wrote the book, and declaring that she was as surprised by them as anyone.

She tells us that she began with the characters of Jo, Bessie and Fanny. Then she followed a winding path through a wood in her imagination, and suddenly saw "the strange Faraway Tree, a tree that touches the sky, and is the home of little folk. I had never heard of it, or seen it till that moment-but there it is, complete in every detail." In reality, Enid Blyton had already been acquainted with the Faraway Tree for about three years before writing The Enchanted Wood, as she had first written about the tree in The Yellow Fairy Book (1936.)

Enid Blyton goes on to describe climbing the tree in her imagination and seeing a door at the top: "... before I can knock, it is opened, and there stands a round, red-faced, twinkling-eyed little fellow, beaming at me. I know who it is, though I have never in my life seen him before. It is Moonface, of course." Once again, further investigation reveals that Enid Blyton had created Moonface previously. He too had appeared in The Yellow Fairy Book, complete with little round room and slippery-slip.

Enid then writes: "I can hear a strange noise-a jingling-jangling, clinking-clanking noise. What is it? Ah, yes, you know, because you have read the book. But at that moment the story hasn't even been written yet, so I don't know. I have to look and see what makes the noise." It is the Saucepan Man, hung with clanking pots and pans, but then Enid Blyton ought to have known that since she had dreamt up the character of the Saucepan Man thirteen years earlier, when writing The Enid Blyton Book of Brownies (1926.)

She describes following Moonface and the Saucepan Man up the topmost branch of the Faraway Tree to discover that "A little yellow ladder stretches surprisingly from the last branch, up through a purple hole in the cloud that lies on the top of the tree." "Surprisingly" may not be quite the right word, as the ladder and cloud also featured in The Yellow Fairy Book.

So, it appears that in The Story of My Life Enid Blyton is giving us a somewhat fictionalised account of the writing of The Enchanted Wood, making things neater and simpler than they really were. Some valuable insights into her creativity may still be gleaned from her account, but it does not portray the whole truth of what was obviously a rather more complex process.

That brings me on to a consideration of the notes compiled by Enid Blyton for the Malory Towers school series. These were first made public in an article by Tony Summerfield for Green Hedges Magazine number 17, Christmas 1995. Notes exist for all six books but Tony looked in detail at the ones for Last Term at Malory Towers, published in 1951. When beginning a new title in the series Enid Blyton would start by jotting down a list of characters from the previous book, before summarising the intended contents of the new story in a couple of pages. The notes for Last Term at Malory Towers contain some plotlines which were not included in the final version of the book, such as the death of Gwendoline's father and Gwendoline's friendship with Amanda. Other proposed storylines concerning Belinda, twins Ruth and Connie and a few more characters may have been rejected by Enid Blyton because of their similarity to incidents in her St. Clare's series. A spiteful Spanish girl called Juanita, mentioned in the notes, does not appear at all in the book as we know it. Tony Summerfield comments: "... one is left wondering if Enid actually referred to these [i.e. to the notes] when she wrote the book" and it does indeed seem that she may have dashed off the notes in a matter of minutes and then failed to consult them while writing.

Although I have provided some evidence of planning, which contradicts Enid's statement that she did not plan her books before starting to write, I believe that, in general, her description of how her stories came pouring out spontaneously still has a good deal of truth in it. We know from her publishers and agents that she worked extremely fast and could complete a whole book in an incredibly short time. At the height of her powers she produced around 10,000 publishable words per day, writing a whole Famous Five or Adventure book in just five days. We also have some of her typewritten manuscripts, which show that remarkably few alterations were made between first draft and publication. These facts alone indicate phenomenal speed and fluency, allowing little time for planning or research. The greatest evidence, however, lies within the books themselves.

Enid Blyton's vocabulary is repetitive, with the same words and phrases, like "gloomily," "queer" and "at top speed" cropping up again and again. She rarely reaches for a more precise word such as "grotesque," "disturbing" or "bizarre" instead of "queer," for example. The most likely explanation for that is that she did not, as a rule, stop to think about the exact choice of words but was indeed swept along by the force of her imagination, her rapidly typing fingers barely able to keep pace with her thoughts.

On the positive side it is perhaps because she spent so little time planning that Enid Blyton's writing displays an appealing freshness and spontaneity, making her books so immensely readable. Enid has a knack of painting apt, imaginative word-pictures without resorting to lengthy descriptions or complicated phrasing which would slow down the narrative. She uses natural-sounding dialogue and lively similes and her work abounds with alliteration and onomatopoeia, enlivening the prose and giving it a lilting quality. Her simplicity of style could actually be regarded as a strength. If she sometimes fails to stretch her readers' vocabulary, she definitely does not fail in stretching their imaginations and making them ponder moral issues. Tough topics like juvenile crime and marital breakdown are tackled in books like The Six Bad Boys and the clarity and fluidity of Enid's writing means that these deeper aspects of her works are all the more accessible.

Enid Blyton maintained that the gates of her imagination were always ready to swing open at the slightest touch. All the things she had experienced in her life provided her with material for her stories. These life experiences:

"... sank down into my 'under-mind' and simmered there, waiting for the time to come when they would be needed again for a book-changed, transmuted, made perfect, finely-wrought-quite different from when they were packed away.

And yet the essence of them was exactly the same. Something had been at work, adapting, altering, deleting here and there, polishing brightly-but still the heart, the essence of the original thing was there, and I could almost always recognize it."

In a letter to Peter McKellar on 26th February 1953 she elaborated on this, saying that things she had seen on holidays, such as islands, castles and caves, would pop up frequently in her stories as she wrote:

"These things come up time and again in my stories, changed, sometimes almost unrecognisable-and then I see a detail that makes me say-yes-that's one of the Cheddar Caves, surely! Characters also remind me of people I have met-I think my imagination contains all the things I have ever seen or heard, things my conscious mind has long forgotten-and they have all been jumbled about till a light penetrates into the mass, and a happening here or an object there is taken out, transmuted, or formed into something that takes a natural and rightful place in the story-or I may recognise it-or I may not-I don't think that I use anything I have not seen or experienced-I don't think I could. I don't think one can take out of one's mind more than one puts in... Our books are facets of ourselves."

Enid Blyton took a great interest in children of all ages, saying: "I want to know you from the very beginning, and go with you all through your childhood till you are old enough to read adult books. I don't want you to be friends with me at one age only, I want to keep in touch with you all through your childhood days." Therefore she wrote for a wide age-range, from the Noddy stories, which are written for very young children, to the more sophisticated mystery and adventure stories. Having so many interests, Enid Blyton loved the challenge of writing about different subjects too. She is best-known for her mystery and adventure books, and for Noddy, but she also wrote school stories, nature books, religious books, animal stories, tales of farms and circuses, family novels, fantasy stories, fairy-tales and nursery tales, poetry, songs, plays and articles, as well as re-telling traditional myths, legends, fables and folk-tales.

The magazines which Enid Blyton wrote and edited-first Sunny Stories and then Enid Blyton's Magazine-kept her in touch with her readers. She wrote in her editorials about her home and family, her garden, her pets and places she had visited. Children felt that they knew her as a friend and would write to her, receiving chatty hand-written letters in reply. Some corresponded with her for years, even into adulthood. This close contact with her readers meant that Enid knew what kinds of stories would appeal to them. Some of the short stories in her magazines were inspired by letters she had received from readers, telling her about interesting or amusing things that had happened to them.

Enid Blyton wrote not only to entertain children but to educate and guide them, and her books invariably contain sound morals. In a letter to librarian Mr. S. C. Dedman in September 1949 she confided: "I'm not out only to tell stories, much as I love this-I am out to inculcate decent thinking, loyalty, honesty, kindliness, and all the things that children should be taught."

As Enid Blyton says to her readers in The Story of My Life: "Even if you have never met me, you know me very well because you have read so many books of mine... I am sure that you know exactly what I stand for, and the things I believe in, without any doubt at all."

Bill Smugs

Bill Smugs of the Adventure series was inspired by a man Enid Blyton and her husband Kenneth met one year while on holiday in Swanage, Dorset. The man said he would like to have adventures, adding: "I'd like to have been in the Secret Service, or something like that. Couldn't you possibly put me into a book and make me a Secret Service man? I really could have adventures then... Put me in as I am, with no hair on top, and anything else you like. And call me-let me see-yes-call me Bill Smugs, will you? That is what I used to call myself as a boy."

Enid Blyton comments in The Story of My Life: "Well, when I wrote the first Adventure book, The Island of Adventure, lo and behold, up popped Bill Smugs into the story. I was rather astonished. There he was, bald head and all-and in the Secret Service too!"

George Kirrin

George in the Famous Five books was based on a real girl: "The real George was short-haired, freckled, sturdy, and snub-nosed. She was bold and daring, hot-tempered and loyal. She was sulky, as George is, too, but she isn't now. We grow out of those failings-or we should! Do you like George? I do."

It is said that Enid Blyton confessed to literary agent Rosica Colin that George was based on herself.

Inspector Jenks

Police Inspector Stephen Jennings was the inspiration for Inspector Jenks in the Find-Outers Mystery books. When Jennings was promoted to Chief Inspector and then Superintendent, Enid gave Jenks promotion too! She wrote that Stephen Jennings was "as broad and burly, and kindly and shrewd and trustable as Inspector Jenks is in the Mysteries."

Fatty

Fatty, or Frederick, in the Find-Outers Mystery books was based on "a plump, ingenious, very amusing boy" whom Enid Blyton once knew.

Claudine

Claudine of the St. Clare's series was inspired by a Belgian girl from Enid's schooldays. "She was extremely naughty, very daring, not at all truthful, and hated games. She was, as our form-mistress said, 'as artful as a bagful of monkeys,' and yet everyone liked her. She would go to great extremes to 'pay back' a slight, or to return a kindness."

Mam'zelle

Plump, amusing, hot-tempered Mam'zelle in the St. Clare's books was modelled on one of the French mistresses who taught Enid Blyton at school: "She did many of the things she does in the books. She flew into rages, she stamped and wailed aloud at our stupidity. She was terrified of bats, mice, beetles, bees and spiders." Enid and her friends played tricks on Mam'zelle and she always fell for them, much to the girls' delight. She was theatrical in her displays of anger but she had a marvellous sense of humour and the girls loved her.

Amelia Jane

Naughty Amelia Jane was a rag doll belonging to Enid's elder daughter, Gillian. "How we all loved Amelia Jane, with her corkscrew hair, her big loose limbs, and her wicked face." When Gillian's friends came to tea, Enid Blyton would sit Amelia Jane on her knee and make her kick biscuits high into the air or smack the dog on the nose, to the amusement of the children.

Kiki

Kiki the parrot in the Adventure books was based on a parrot named Kiki owned by Enid's old aunt. Enid says: "She was a wonderful parrot, intelligent, talkative and mischievous."

Loony

Black cocker spaniel Loony in the Barney Mysteries (also known as the "R" Mysteries) was inspired by Enid Blyton's dog, Laddie: "I had to put Laddie into a book. He is so beautiful, so mad, and sometimes so extraordinarily silly."

Bimbo and Topsy

The stars of the book Bimbo and Topsy, Bimbo the Siamese cat and Topsy the fox-terrier, were real pets belonging to Enid Blyton.

Rewards Series

Storytime Book

Happy Hours Story Book

Brer Rabbit Book

Brer Rabbit Again

Round the Clock Stories

Chimney Corner Stories

Tales of Brave Adventure

Tales of Toyland and Other Stories

Adventures of Pip

Brer Rabbit's a Rascal

Tales of Long Ago

Sunshine Book

Stories for Bedtime

Stories for You

Book of Brownies

Book of Fairies

The Adventures of Binkle and Flip

The Three Golliwogs

Hello, Mr Twiddle!

Well, Really, Mr Twiddle!

Naughty Amelia Jane!

Amelia Jane Again

Bimbo and Topsy

The Adventures of Mr Pink Whistle

Mr Meddle's Muddles

Mr Meddle's Mischief

Mr Pink-Whistle Interferes

Merry Mister Meddle

Mr Pink-Whilste's Party

Don't Be Silly, Mr Twiddle!

The Magic Faraway Tree

Adventures of the Whishing Chair

The Enchanted Wood

The Naughtiest Girl Again

The Wishing-Chair Again

The Folk of the Faraway Tree

The Adventurous Four

Mr Galliano's Circus

The Children of Cherry Tree Farm

The Adventurous Four Again

The Naughtiest Girl in the School

Hurrah for the Circus!

The Children of Willow Farm

The Naughtiest Girl is a Monitor

Circus Days Again

More Adventures on Willow Farm

More About Amelia Jane

Come to the Circus

 

Malory Towers

First Term at Malory Towers

Second Form at Malory Towers

Third Year at Malory Towers

Upper Fourth at Malory Towers

In the Fifth at Malory Towers

Last Term at Malory Towers

 

St Clare's

The Twins at St Clare's

The O'Sullivan Twins

Summer Term at St Clare's

The Second Form at St Clare's

Claudine at St Clare's

Fifth Formers at St Clare's

 

The Adventure Series

The Island of Adventure

The Castle of Adventure

The Valley of Adventure

The Sea of Adventure

The Mountain of Adventure

The Ship of Adventure

The Circus of Adventure

The River of Adventure

 

The Barney Mysteries

The Rockingdown Mystery

The Rilloby Fair Mystery

The Ring O'Bells Mystery

The Rubadub Mystery

The Rat-a-Tat Mystery

The Ragamuffin Mystery

 

The Famous Five

Five On a Treasure Island

Five Go Adventuring Again

Five Run Away Together

Five Go To Smuggler's Top

Five Go Off in a Caravan

Five On Kirrin Island Again

Five Go Off to Camp

Five Get Into Trouble

Five Fall Into Adventure

Five On a Hike Together

Five Have a Wonderful Time

Five Go Down to the Sea

Five Go to Mystery Moor

Five Have Plenty of Fun

Five On a Secret Trail

Five Go to Billycock Hill

Five Get Into a Fix

Five on Finniston Farm

Five Go to Demln's Rocks

Five Have a Mystery to Solve

Five Are Together Again

The Famous Five Adventure Games

The Wreckers' Tower Game

The Haunted Railway Game

The Whispering Island Game

The Sinister Lake Game

The Wailing Lighthouse Game

The Secret Airfield Game

The Shuddering Mountain Game

The Missing Scientist Game

 

Mystery Series

The Mystery of the Burnt Cottage

The Mystery of the Disappearing Car

The Mystery of the Secret Room

The Mystery of the Spiteful Letters

The Mystery of the Missing Necklace

The Mystery of the Hidden House

The Mystery of the Pantomime Cat

The Mystery of the Invisible Thief

The Mystery of the Vanished Prince

The Mystery of the Strange Bundle

The Mystery of Holly Lane

The Mystery of Tally-Ho Cottage

The Mystery of the Missing Man

The Mystery of the Strange Messages

The Mystery of Banshee Towers

 

The Secret Series

The Secret Island

The Secret of Spiggy Holes

The Secret Mountain

The Secret of Killimooin

The Secret of Moon Castle

 

The Secret Seven

The Secret Seven

Secret Seven Adventure

Well Done Secret Seven

Secret Seven on the Trail

Go Ahead Secret Seven

Good Work Secret Seven

Secret Seven Win Through

Three Cheers Secret Seven

Secret Seven Mystery

Puzzle for the Secret Seven

Secret Seven Fireworks

Good Old Secret Seven

Shock for the Secret Seven

Look Out Secret Seven