The Enid Blyton Society

Me too.. we are most fond of what we first saw, and that is quite understandable. The illustrations give us our vision of what the characters look like and to see another interpretation doesn't seem quite right, somehow.

Derek Lucas's covers for The Secret Seven gave me that same excited feeling. They were my sister's books, so they weren't bought new, but I remember studying the covers avidly, copying the internal illustrations, and feeling that this WAS the Secret Seven. For me, his covers will always be the very best Enid Blyton paperback covers and the definitive Secret Seven covers.

I remember buying a couple of Secret Seven books I didn't have, and being bitterly disappointed that the covers had now become the travesties with PHOTOGRAPHIC COVERS! The Secret Seven had changed identity! I didn't like them at all - but I was relieved to see the same internal illustrations!



I think its true though that the covers we first come across are often those we like best. One of my favourite ever dust wrappers is for Rilloby Fair - which is the only original dust wrapper book I owned as a child - aged 10. I never owned another Enid Blyton in a DW until I was about 30!



One of my favourite covers as an adult is from The Mystery of the Strange Messages -



I just wish Lilian Buchanan had done more Find Outer covers!

Thanks for sharing those lovely covers Rob.

Like yourself,I prefer the Derek Lucas editions of The Secret Seven to the original,although as I've said many a time I love Eileen Soper's and Betty Maxey's Famous Five's artwork equally.

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Equals - in my humble eyes.

So do I, Pete. There are really no Enid Blyton covers I don't like, pre-1980.

I think Derek Lucas and Betty Maxey and Mary Gernat provoke great feeings of nostalgia for me, as do the covers of the Dean versions of books I had - The Wishing Chair, Farway Tree, Cherry Tree Farm books and Galliano's Circus books - which the original dust wrappers don't give me, as to me the wrappers are only designs I came across in my 20's and 30's.

To our generation, quite often anyway, the Soper covers and all the other originals are 'new' compared to the Lucas, Maxey and Gernat covers!

I agree with Rob about wishing Lilian Buchanan had done more Find Outer covers. I wish she'd done all of them.

So do I, John! I do quite like the Treyer Evans covers, but Lilian Buchanan's are so lively and the characters are just as I imagine them.

Rob's 'Mystery Of The Missing Man' picture brought back the subject of two posers, the answers to which were discussed in 2010 when corresponding with an EBS member (Daisy).

Has any other Forum Follower managed to spot the couple of mistakes in 'Missing Man?' One can be observed on the cover, and the second (inside) is connected.

I remember it well! (But never came up with an answer as far as I recall!)