The Enid Blyton Society

I've deliberately separated this from the main Mary Gernat thread to be discussed separately, as I did not think the Famous Five were ever illustrated by Mary Gernat.

I've never seen this cover before - perhaps it was never officially produced??

It's a nice illustration. Reminds me of a Find-Outers cover. I think the cover was from Missing Man, with a dark blue background. Must check the Cave and have a look.

Yes, I see the picture I was meaning is a Mary Gernat one. And I see she did a few for the paperbacks. Nice covers.

This cover was certainly never used. All Famous Five paperbacks were published by Brockhampton under their Knight imprint and I am pretty confident that Mary Gernat did no work for Knight at all. As we all know they chose somebody called Betty Maxey to illustrated their Famous Five paperbacks!! The title looks pretty crude there almost as if it was put on as an afterthought with no room left for the signature and as I mentioned in another thread I saw a large number of Mary Gernat's roughs and her titles were much better than this and she also added the famous Blyton signature.

Wow - it's exciting to see Mary Gernat depicting the Famous Five, even though she wasn't used for that series in the end. Well-spotted, Pete! It's an attractive cover, though that hill looks jolly steep for a horse pulling a caravan - and I'm not sure where the second caravan has got to!

I don't think this version of a cover for Last Term at Malory Towers was used either, though Mary Gernat did design two other covers for that book:

It's interesting that the font on both books mixes up upper and lower case letters in a similar way..'in a ' 'of the'...The white haired lad looks very similar in both pics and the caravans are drawn in a very similar style.

This artwork is puzzling me more and more as it just doesn't look like the things that Mary Gernat showed me. The signatures are all identical and look as if they have been put on all with the same stencil. The two bits that I have show the whole cover with the picture on the back of the dustwrapper as well and the signature certainly hasn't been put on by stencil on either. I know I saw these about 17 or 18 years ago, but I seem to remember that other Blyton artwork was similar to the two bits that I bought, so I am wondering just what the ones on Roger How's website are.

I wonder (if this Famous Five painting was dated around 1965/1966) whether it was possible Mary Gernat was asked/approached by Knight to submit potential artwork for the Famous Five paperbacks that were to appear towards the late 1960's?

Was Betty Maxey first choice for the Knight paperback editions,or were a few illustrators tried out before the Knight paperbacks by Betty Maxey were eventually published?

http://www.marygernat-howillustrations. ... id-blyton/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Used or not the artworks depicted in this thread are all lovely and highly evocative.