The Enid Blyton Society

Members, have you seen the new scans of original EB manuscripts in the "Members" section? Amazing.....

I've just had a look at them and yes, they're fascinating. The manuscript of The Ship of Adventure is evidence that Enid Blyton did indeed write at speed - look how she uses the word "little" five times over just a few lines, and then deletes some of those occurrences later. The corrections on the manuscripts are actually remarkably few, demonstrating just how fluent a writer she was.

The Malory Towers notes are also intriguing. Did anyone else read Tony Summerfield's excellent article on those notes in Green Hedges Magazine number 17 (Christmas 1995)? What an amazing article that was, examining the notes which Enid Blyton made for Last Term at Malory Towers. We learn from the article that a number of Blyton's initial ideas were scrapped or modified as she wrote, two major changes being that a spiteful Spanish girl called Juanita never materialises, and Gwendoline's father doesn't die as originally planned. Since Enid Blyton went with the flow as she wrote, I doubt she referred back to her notes much as the stories progressed anyway. Still, the jottings on the Malory Towers books are very revealing and help us understand the working methods of a phenomenon like Enid Blyton.

HeatherS wrote:Members, have you seen the new scans of original EB manuscripts in the "Members" section? Amazing.....

Yes, they are truly wonderful. Incidentally, is it possible to purchase back copies of the Journal online? It says 'check out the online shop, but I can't find them!

That's a good point, Moonraker! I'll fix the site so that back issues can be added to the shopping cart. Check back later or tomorrow.

Keith

Keith Robinson wrote:That's a good point, Moonraker! I'll fix the site so that back issues can be added to the shopping cart. Check back later or tomorrow.

Keith

Good man!

Well, I fixed the shopping cart so that back issues of Journals can be added. You just go to the Journal Catalogue, choose the Journal you want, and click the "Add to cart" link from that Journal's info page (if that Journal is available -- otherwise it'll say "sold out").

Be warned that Tony's computer is currently having problems at the moment and although I've asked him to check availability of Journals, I don't think he's been able to yet, so there's a vague possibility that you'll order something that isn't really available. But I believe it's all correct, according to the information he gave earlier, so go ahead (if you want to) and test the system for me!

Any bugs, problems, or suggestions, please let me know.

Keith

Anita Bensoussane wrote: The Malory Towers notes are also intriguing. Did anyone else read Tony Summerfield's excellent article on those notes in Green Hedges Magazine number 17 (Christmas 1995)? What an amazing article that was, examining the notes which Enid Blyton made for Last Term at Malory Towers. We learn from the article that a number of Blyton's initial ideas were scrapped or modified as she wrote, two major changes being that a spiteful Spanish girl called Juanita never materialises, and Gwendoline's father doesn't die as originally planned. Since Enid Blyton went with the flow as she wrote, I doubt she referred back to her notes much as the stories progressed anyway. Still, the jottings on the Malory Towers books are very revealing and help us understand the working methods of a phenomenon like Enid Blyton.

Has that article from Tony ever appeared in the Journal? Or could it possibly if not?
It sounds intriguing.

I agree Pete, a reprint in the Journal would be a good idea.

My infamous article that caused quite a kerfuffle at the time, you really are digging back a long way here, Pete. At that time Michael Rouse gave it as the reason for closing Green Hedges after No. 18, as he had had several complaints about it, including some from the family who were very offended by it! I asked Gillian who was the only family member to receive Green Hedges at that time and was not surprised when she told me that she hadn't even read the article! A year or two later when we were back on speaking terms Michael admitted to me that he hadn't had any letters about it, but was afraid that he might get some. At the time Green Hedges was the Magazine for the newly formed Society, and Michael imagined that by closing Green Hedges he would leave the Society with no magazine and that would be the end of it, so that if he restarted Green Hedges after a decent interval (which indeed he did) that would once again be the only Enid Blyton outlet. Unwittingly the result of this was the birth of the Journal in 1996, as we knew that without a magazine, Michael was right, and it would indeed be the end of the Society which only had about 40 members then. I worked hard on that and over the next few years Journal 1 had to be reprinted three times and I ended up sending out 436 copies of it which remained a record until Journal 29 sales figures overtook it.

So no, Pete, my article has never been in the Journal and as we get so much material for it I no longer have to worry about writing anything other than the editorial! But if we are ever short of articles, who knows!

I'm a bit puzzled as to how an article could have caused so much kerfuffle, as you call it, Tony! From what I can gather from what's been talked about on this thread (which is very little!!) it doesn't sound like a very contentious or controversial article to me! Intriguing!

Oh my! After reading Tony's comment, I feel very tempted to read the article myself to know what was the issue in the article that led to the kerfuffle!

I have just read the article in question - fortunately, a dash down to the cellars was successful in finding a copy of GH17! Most interesting and I can quite agree with Tony that for a writer who had several series of books on tap at the same time, keeping some a record of characters would be a great (if not essential) asset. It was most interesting to see that some of these characters didn't materialise or else appeared in a different form.

I am at a loss to understand why complaints rolled in. Was it a year or two later Gillian or Michael were back on speaking terms with you? The wording is slightly ambiguous. As far as I can see, it was an extremely interesting article, backed up with Enid's handwritten notes, so contained no speculation, which of course one wouldn't expect from you anyway.

I can only imagine that certain people were irritated that the bubble of Enid's cinema-screen memory was burst, and didn't want the public to know that she made notes of her characters and original ideas.

I find it incredible that anyone should be annoyed or angered by anything written about Enid Blyton's writing techniques. I've never fully believed in the 'cinema screen' approach. I know what Enid means - the same is true of me when I write a story - but she MUST have made notes and jotted down a few things, even if she didn't plan heavily. Particularly in more complicated stories like the school ones, where several threads are interwoven. I cant understand why Gillian or Michael didn't speak to Tony for a couple of years!

Now of course, everyone wants to read the article!!

Rob Houghton wrote:
Now of course, everyone wants to read the article!!

I'm glad others are interested too.
Maybe Tony will consider it for future inclusion if we all behave ourselves!

I have obviously written this badly, as all I said about Gillian was that she hadn't read the article - nothing about not speaking to me for two years, that was Michael Rouse and even then it was more a matter of us having nothing to talk about. I also said that nobody actually complained about the article, it was simply that Michael Rouse thought they might.