The Enid Blyton Society

At the risk of being shouted down by Tony for not looking at his bibs (I only have one, arrived in the mail yesterday, thanks Tony, and one can't answer my question), here goes:

This article came to my attention today.

http://www.midsussextimes.co.uk/feature" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ... id=2953912

I had never heard of Marjorie Davies. She didn't come up in a search for "davies" in the booklisting on the main site either. What exactly did she illustrate?

Not shouting you down very quickly, Heather, been busy working on the next Journal and I'm only just catching up with posts. If you look in the Journal catalogue at Journal 13 you will see a cover by Marjorie Davies. I went to interview her with Imogen seven years ago - when she was only 94!! Her nephew who lives on your side of the pond did a booklet on her and I did a sort of 'illustrography' for him of all the work she had done for EB. Quite a bit actually, but it was all in either short story books or magazines such as Sunny Stories.

I featured the bedside books in a recent Journal and she did the cover for the Ninth Book.

Glad you got Part 1 of My Illustrated Bibs okay - some of that is a birthday present from me as you only paid for UK postage! When you buy Part 2 for next year's birthday don't forget to click on worldwide postage - and I might even send you a colour copy!! Hope you find Part 1 useful.

Oops! So sorry about the postage! You should have told me and I could have sent through the rest. I'm happy to do that, just let me know how much it is.

Thanks for the information re. Marjorie Davies. I'm too much of a latecomer to have read journal 13, but I'll definitely look at the cover. Now that I know what she illustrated I can add her to my website. Thanks!

I saw that article today as well, and was going to try and post it on the forums.

It's amazing she is 101, and illustrated Enid's work in the 1930s!

I can attach the article from Journal 13 to an email if you would like to see it, Heather, just let me know.

Marjorie L Davies had a very distintive style and much of her work was just signed MLD. When she showed me her scrapbook I was delighted to find that I had been able to correctly identify some of her uncredited work. I completely failed on one of the more interesting uncredited items though, she illustrated the only Noddy story to appear in Sunny Stories, 'Run, Noddy, Run!' This makes her one of the earliest Noddy illustrators. She freely admitted that it wasn't really her sort of thing and was not at all surprised that she never got asked to illustrate Noddy again!

She is one of a number of illustrators who did a lot of work for Enid Blyton, but as it was all on short stories, none will come up on the search facility on our book listing as the illustrators for the books concerned are normally numerous and I have just listed it as various. I will try to think of some way to get round this at some stage in the future. You will find however that all illustrators are listed in full in my Bibliographies and each one also contains and index of illustrators. This still won't help of course on Sunny Stories and Enid Blyton's Magazine, but one day all that information will also appear on this website!

Marjorie Davies is my Aunt - she is a glorious old lady and we are so proud of her, she still lives alone in her cottage and paints and draws every day. As a child we used to have idyllic holidays with her and her storytelling was magical, I love her to bits.
Jacquie

Hello Jacquie, welcome to the forums, I remember that you and I were in touch at the time that Imogen and I went to see your Aunt. It is wonderful to read that she is still going strong. I phoned Imogen and told her and she was also delighted to hear the news as we both thought your Aunt was such a nice person. 101 is a grand old age.

That's amazing! It is lovely to think of your Aunt still drawing and being able to live on her own. Maybe there's life in me yet!

Welcome Jacquie.

Amazing! What a lovely lady she must be! It's great to think she is still able to draw!

Welcome, Jacquie!

Thank you for the welcome, I was so sad to hear of the death of Gillian today.

Auntie Marjorie had illustrations in most of the Bedside Books - as far as I can recall I have 2-11 and also in Holiday books and Story Times.

I had a lovely experience with her a few years back when I took her to the Brighton Eye Hospital to have cataracts removed, as we returned over the Sussex Downs she was overwhelmed by the colours that she was now seeing and promptly reworked all her latest work as she then found them too drab!

My only sadness is that none of us have inherited her talent, she sadly had no children of her own but for us, my two sisters and I, it meant that we had her all to ourselves - we were the luckiest children in the world! I remember one summer our parents took us to visit for a day and two weeks later we were still there - she would wash our clothes over night and if they were not dry by morning so be it! we would spend the day in our pyjamas having the most glorious fun!

Every day of my life I thank God for giving us Auntie Marjorie
Jacquie

Thanks for that, Jacquie. Marjorie Davies sounds like a wonderful aunt!

Welcome to the Forums!

Anita

Your aunt sounds lovely, Jacquie. Very pleased that you let us know about her.

I just found this and realised I'd forgotten to check this thread for replies!

Tony, I'd love an emailed copy of that article, because it would be good to include her in my illustrator's list, and to do that I need some information about her.

Also, Jacquie, if you have a digital photograph of your aunt I would love to have a copy emailed to me that I can show her as she is now on my site. I'll send you a PM with my email address if you do have one.

Hi Heather,
If you could send me your email address I will send you one taken on her 100th birthday, we did take some on her 101st but I guess they must be on my sisters camera!
love
Jacquie

Tony, just wondering if you were able to find that article from Journal 13 for me?

Thanks.

Heather.