The Enid Blyton Society

I was browsing through the Cave as usual and found an odd feature in Enid Blyton's Magazine 13th April 1955. 'Portraits of favourite authors No.1: Elinor Lyon.' I can't find any others in this series although I haven't done an exhaustive search. Can anyone tell me if it was it the only one? It seems a strange feature to run in EB's Magazine. Perhaps the publisher slipped that one in unnoticed to publicise other authors and Enid put a stop to it.

I also noticed that that issue contains three uncollected stories, not unusual but they sound particularly good; a Mr Twiddle story and another titled Sitting on an Adventure, there is a letter from one of the characters in the story too. Please, please Mr Editor may we have these reprinted in the Journal?

I must admit I feel envious of you, being able to browse the EB Magazine listings - I can never find any when I enter a search in the cave - or at least, they come up randomly, usually because I enter the name of a story that features in one! How do we do a search for Enid Blyton's Magazine? I've noticed putting 'Enid Blyton's Magazine brings up zero results!

I have that issue of Enid Blyton's Magazine, and I agree, it seems strange that they are advertising another author - Elinor Lyon. However, this seems to be an advert for her books, rather than a feature as such. I'm not sure if they followed this up with 'Portraits of Favourite Authors' number 2 or 3, but it's really just an advert - and EB's Magazine had many various adverts, not always connected with Enid Blyton, such as Sharp's Toffees, Dinky Toys, Cadbury's chocolate competition, Dolls wigs, etc.

The stories do look interesting though! Thanks for drawing my attention to 'Sitting On An Adventure' - as I've yet to read this!

Interestingly, this magazine also has a letter from a little girl, asking what the surname of the Famous Five is, and Enid Blyton's answer is that their surname is Kirrin. Is this the first time Enid reveals their name? She makes a big thing of it, saying 'You have asked me a question that hundreds of children ask. So now I will give the answer and set everyone's mind at rest. The surname of the four cousins ; George, Julian, Dick and Anne, is KIRRIN. That's easy to remember, isn't it, because of Kirrin Island. Please don't ask me what Timmy, the dog's surname is!"

I have always regretted that the Magazines aren't set out in the same way as the Periodicals, as if that were the case I would have been able to load some of the uncollected stories, and although there aren't all that many in Sunny Stories there are plenty in Enid Blyton's Magazine as there were relatively few short story book collections after this was published and most of these used stories that had previously been published in other books.

As a regular Cave visitor, Kate, I thought you deserved to see the page you mention. It is really just an advert for her books, and there were plenty of these for other authors in the Magazine from some of Enid's other publishers, in this case Hodder & Stoughton. I am not sure about the '1' as at a quick glance through the rest of the year I haven't been able to find a '2'!