The Enid Blyton Society

I've never seen a copy of Sunny Stories or The Enid Blyton Magazine. I'm wondering which of any of the series of books were first serialised in these mags. Any of the Famous Five books published that way? Any of the Mysteries? Certainly it doesn't refer to this on any of the early editions of the books that I have...

Hi there - Thanks for starting this section off, it was beginning to look a bit lonely as the only non-starter! The answer to your question is yes, plenty of books were first serialised in magazines and periodicals - and not just in Sunny Stories and Enid Blyton's Magazine.

I am actually writing an article on this very subject for the next Journal and it will include details of where and when everything can be found - at a rough count over 90 full-length books were serialised and this includes 10 of the Famous Five books. Interestingly all of the magazines contain Eileen Soper illustrations totally different to the books and this is another of my on-going projects to produce a booklet with all uncollected Soper Famous Five illustrations - there are so many it may have to be two booklets!

Hope this helps a bit.

Best wishes
Tony

That's interesting, I'll look out for the article on novels and their serialisation in the next issue of the journal!

So she published ten Famous Five books as serials. I don't suppose that made much difference to the way she actually wrote them, as the ideas and the story came all in a flow that she didn't like to be interrupted once those sluice-gates were open.

All the same, I was surprised to read elsewhere on the website that she wrote a Five title in just four days and was able to play golf on the Friday! That sounds like just too many words per day to be feasible. Still, she's on record as saying that she wrote The River of Adventure (60,000 words) in five days, and the Five books aren't as long, so maybe it's true! Which of the Five novels was that, I wonder? I'll look for signs of slapdash writing, inconsistency and endless repetition. As in the Billycock Hill book when the kid keeps saying about his pet piglet that he 'runned away'...

Hi Tony,

For style analysis, would it be possible to provide the chapter breaks for one Famous Five novel that was serialised - or was it one chapter per issue ?

kind regards

Hi Tony
I know I read Blyton stories in 'other' books and annuals during the 50's, do you know if there's any record of which books/annuals published her work? ( Eg 'Collins Big Book for Girls' etc)
I always find loads of annuals at Hay-on-Wye, but trawling through them all is a bit of a nightmare!

Yes Tess, my Bibliographies contain all this information!! One day we might be able to add this sort of thing to the Book Listing, but there is so much we want to do and still only 24 hours in a day!!

rogoz wrote:For style analysis, would it be possible to provide the chapter breaks for one Famous Five novel that was serialised - or was it one chapter per issue ?

Sorry to be a bit slow coming back on this one, but all serialisations used exactly the same chapters as the books.

Thanks very much Tony. That could explain a lot.

Tony Summerfield wrote:Interestingly all of the magazines contain Eileen Soper illustrations totally different to the books and this is another of my on-going projects to produce a booklet with all uncollected Soper Famous Five illustrations - there are so many it may have to be two booklets!

Hope this helps a bit.

Best wishes
Tony

Was that booklet project ever completed?

Also,is there a place to view all the uncollected Soper Famous Five illustrations in one place in the cave???


Regards

Pete

I'm afraid not, Pete. I did put all the illustrations from Five Go Off to Camp into the Cave as this was the only Famous Five book to be serialised in Sunny Stories and you will find the Soper illustrations from Princess in the Periodical section, but there are still a few books to do and right at the moment I am trying to get used to a new scanner.

Well thank you very much for the update anyway Tony. I thought perhaps I had missed out on a project that by now was perhaps long out of print!

Regards

Pete

One of the things on my 'to do' list is in fact to put all the Society publications into the Cave. There is no natural place to put them, so I thought that if Bill's Diary can go into Continuation Books why shouldn't Society publications go there too. I will get round to it as soon as I have the time to spare.

Tony Summerfield wrote:There is no natural place to put them, so I thought that if Bill's Diary can go into Continuation Books why shouldn't Society publications go there too.

Perhaps you could create a "Lost Stories" section and put them there? Or an "EBS Facsimile" section. I think either of those might be a much more natural home than continuation books. They are, after all, not really "continuations" at all being Enid's own work. I think the Lost section has quite an air of mystery about it.

Tony Summerfield wrote:One of the things on my 'to do' list is in fact to put all the Society publications into the Cave. There is no natural place to put them, so I thought that if Bill's Diary can go into Continuation Books why shouldn't Society publications go there too. I will get round to it as soon as I have the time to spare.

As if you have read my thought!

Would love to buy all back issues of EBS booklets!

Could they be reprinted, please?