The Enid Blyton Society

I enjoyed reading this months updates and also liked looking through the 'Mystery and Suspense Magazines'. Really interesting - the Secret Seven badge looks a brilliant free gift! My favourite front covers are the pictures taken from the 90's TV series. Very nice photographs. Looks like they were nice, exciting magazines.

Katharine wrote:I was also interested to see Enid recommending Pilgrims Progress as a book for children. I've got a copy which I started to read a few months ago. I haven't got past more than a few pages and found it heavy going and very dull. I will force myself to finish reading it one day, but so far have no inclination to pick it up again. If I feel like that as an adult, I'm pretty certain I wouldn't have been able to manage to get through it as a child.

It's possible that Enid Blyton had in mind an abridged children's edition - I know that children's versions of classics like Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver's Travels were popular. By the way, didn't the girls in Louisa May Alcott's Little Women read The Pilgrim's Progress? We know Enid Blyton loved Little Women as a child or teenager, so she may have come to The Pilgrim's Progress initially through that.

I like The Pilgrim's Progress but I didn't read it until I was 16. Some sections consist of prolonged and quite heavy debates on religious matters, but Enid Blyton avoids that kind of thing in The Land of Far-Beyond and her book is much more child-friendly (though still rather sombre).

Poppy wrote:...'Mystery and Suspense Magazines'. Really interesting - the Secret Seven badge looks a brilliant free gift! My favourite front covers are the pictures taken from the 90's TV series.

I like some of the drawn covers best - for me they're more atmospheric. The covers for issues 1 and 6 are particularly attractive (though I don't like the drawing for the cover of issue 2, which isn't in the same league).

Just read November's seasonal notes, and how lovely they are. They're always so informative and I love reading about what the animals and birds are up to, and when the sun rises and sets.

The magazine covers are great! I too like the photos from the 90's FF series!
The drawn covers reminded me of when Snubby is on the train in Rilloby Fair and is reading his Spies! Spies! Spies! book, I think it was just because the magazine covers are bright and look full of action and also look quite retro, and Snubby's book is described as having a lurid, bright cover - just made me think of it!

I've just read Enid Blyton's Seasonal Notes for December 1929:

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It's interesting to see Enid Blyton recommending Robert Louis Stevenson to children. Even then he wasn't contemporary, yet still today my 13-year-old son enjoyed Stevenson's poems when he was younger and also loves Treasure Island.

I hadn't known that Ludwig Van Beethoven's father used to wake him up at night to practise music, making Beethoven hate music (hopefully that hatred was only temporary and didn't last his whole life!) It reminded me of how Enid Blyton grew to resent practising the piano despite being a talented player, as she was made to devote long hours to music when she knew her real gift lay in writing.

We learn a lot from reading these Seasonal Notes. I didn't know why Boxing Day was called Boxing Day. Now I do after reading Enid's explanation of the boxes in the Church for people to donate money for the poor, and the money being distributed the day after Christmas Day.

Is part of the fifth line missing? It just says, "Decem means"

It was a very poor photocopy and some of the first word was missing in the whole of that first column (it was originally printed as three columns) - when the missing word is 'ten' the whole word is obliterated. After spending over an hour trying to clean it up a bit I almost lost the will to live and decided to leave the rest to the reader's imagination!

Thanks for the explanation, Tony.

I enjoy the Teachers' World Seasonal Notes. I always learn something new and there are so many treasures in the Cave that it is good to have them highlighted occasionally.

Definitely. It is so easy to take The Cave for granted, in the knowledge of knowing it is filled with treasure, and will always be there. We (I, certainly) often need a prod in the right direction!

I've found the seasonal notes for January very interesting, I liked reading about Janus and the twelve doors open in war and closed in peace. I had heard of Janus but I didn't know that.

I also enjoyed the Seasonal Notes for January 1930. Enid often uses anthropomorphism and it helps readers conjure up a lively, vivid picture of the natural world when she writes of the birds "beginning to dream of spring" or describes the flowers pushing through into a cold world as "brave".

Anita Bensoussane wrote:I also enjoyed the Seasonal Notes for January 1930.

It is actually January 1929. As I started doing these Seasonal Notes in March last year, I have had to go back to add the January notes and of course when I do February that will also be from 1929.

Oops - silly me, I should have known that!

Anita Bensoussane wrote: Enid often uses anthropomorphism...

Thank goodness for online dictionaries!