The Enid Blyton Society

Robert Houghton wrote: Very enjoyable story though - except I hate to think how I would have felt if my parents had sent me to boarding school at 7!

Well, it used to happen in real life - I know a British lady who was born in Calcutta and shipped off to England for boarding school at just about that age. As you can imagine, she HATED it.

I liked the way Enid got the moral across - it would have been better for Timothy to have told the truth in the first place, and he wouldn't have been made to get rid of his mouse after all if he did - while portraying him with such sympathy that we can understand very well why he chooses to do what he does. As an author, she nearly always manages to make a good moral point without being rigidly black-and-white or too heavy-handed about it, which is one aspect of her writing style that I've always appreciated.

Thank you so much, Tony for uploading the story and more entries in the diaries. The only way we could read obscure stories from 'Sunny Stories For Little Folks' is when you upload them in The Cave. Keep them coming!

We can see that Enid was a meticulous person judging from the entries.

Courtenay wrote:As an author, she nearly always manages to make a good moral point without being rigidly black-and-white or too heavy-handed about it, which is one aspect of her writing style that I've always appreciated.

Agreed. My exact opinion as well. This is one aspect of her writing that I like so much other than the exciting way she tells her stories.

But she tends to repeat her stories. The same plots/ the same morals but with different name of the characters. I have been reading Award short stories collection since May. There are 72 books in total. Each book contains 15-18 short stories. I can see a pattern/formula in her short stories.

True, but I could imagine if I'd written so many thousands of individual short stories over some four decades, I'd have trouble avoiding them becoming a bit repetitive too!

I, too, enjoyed Timothy's Tame Mouse, although I realised early on that the man in the train was a teacher. I hope that Timothy remembered to apologise to his friend Robin after accusing him of hiding the mouse.

sixret wrote:

Courtenay wrote:As an author, she nearly always manages to make a good moral point without being rigidly black-and-white or too heavy-handed about it, which is one aspect of her writing style that I've always appreciated.

Agreed. My exact opinion as well. This is one aspect of her writing that I like so much other than the exciting way she tells her stories.

But she tends to repeat her stories. The same plots/ the same morals but with different name of the characters. I have been reading Award short stories collection since May. There are 72 books in total. Each book contains 15-18 short stories. I can see a pattern/formula in her short stories.

In a way it's an achievement that she actually repeated exact plots very rarely. There may be elements of the same plot, but often with slightly different outcomes, characters, or situations. Given how many short stories she wrote, I think it's amazing how varied they all are. For example, Timothy's Tame Mouse has a very similar basic plot to a story for older children in Enid Blyton's Treasury - 'The Cheat' in that it's set in a school, and the main character takes things into their own hands in order to have something they badly want, only to be proved wrong - but the two are also totally different stories written in entirely different ways.

Enjoyable stories, fun to read. Terms like "stockings" (for boys) and "drill-master" in 'Timothy's Tame Mouse' remind us just how early these tales are. Thanks, Tony - and David Chambers.

Going back to the top of page 2 in this thread to the 'book that never was', Once Upon a Time, you will see that Enid sent the stories to Ewing in August 1944. There were many loose pages tucked into this workbook and opposite this particular page was a letter replying to Enid from Hayland Ewing in October 1944. He also sent separate lists of the proposed stories for both books mentioned which explains why Enid crossed out 4 stories from her original list of 25. The fact that Enid has ticked the stories on the list below meant that she would never send them to any publisher again, which explains why apart from the few that were used in a later National Magazine Co, book, The Good Morning Book, most of them have remained uncollected. One can only guess why Once Upon a Time was never published, perhaps they ran out of paper, a constant problem with rationing in the war years.

interesting list of stories! I see that a few of these eventually featured in 'The Good Morning Book'

There are some great titles in that list; Giant Limber Lumber, The Pixies who forgot their corkscrew, The Donkey Well etc. I must look out for a copy of The Good Morning Book and please may we have some of the uncollected stories in future Journals?

I don't actually have any of these stories myself other than the two that David Chambers kindly sent me, I would like to know 'How Peter Caught a Poacher'!

I do have a nice uncollected story in mind for the next Journal though!

Tony Summerfield wrote:I do have a nice uncollected story in mind for the next Journal though!

Tony whets our appetite and we now have ages to wait!

I'd like to hear all about 'The Little Sootie Boys'!

Julie2owlsdene wrote:

Tony Summerfield wrote:I do have a nice uncollected story in mind for the next Journal though!

Tony whets our appetite and we now have ages to wait!

Don't encourage him, Julie. Just say, "Whatever!"