The Enid Blyton Society

Split from another topic.

I wonder if these two articles will interest fans of Enid Blyton here. They got some photos there. They are posted in Bahasa Indonesia blog.



links:
http://red-white-cross.blogspot.com/201 ... y-and.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://red-white-cross.blogspot.com/201 ... nd_12.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

jubei wrote:I wonder if these two articles will interest fans of Enid Blyton here. They got some photos there. They are posted in Bahasa Indonesia blog.

A big thank you, jubei!!!
I printed them out from your two links and added them to my EB articles collection which keeps growing.
I think it's great that Indonesians also love Enid Blyton.
Forgive me, but I'm not very good with Indonesian history: was Indonesia at some point part of the British Empire? Maybe that's the reason why Blyton got translated?

Very interesting articles. Especially the second one written while she was alive. Thanks for posting them jubei.

Most interesting articles. Thank you for posting them, jubei.

Chrissie777 wrote:

jubei wrote:I wonder if these two articles will interest fans of Enid Blyton here. They got some photos there. They are posted in Bahasa Indonesia blog.

A big thank you, jubei!!!
I printed them out from your two links and added them to my EB articles collection which keeps growing.
I think it's great that Indonesians also love Enid Blyton.
Forgive me, but I'm not very good with Indonesian history: was Indonesia at some point part of the British Empire? Maybe that's the reason why Blyton got translated?

Singapore and Malaysia have British Empire legacy, but Indonesia actually precede by so called Dutch East Indies, which is a Dutch colony. I think Enid Blyton books started getting translated in Indonesia in the '80s era. I am not sure what the exact reason Blyton got translated, maybe because they were already popular worldwide. It was a golden era of juvenile novel here in the '80s to mid '90s. Later, this era were taken over by the Japanese comic / manga, started somewhere in the mid '90s.

Very interesting articles, Jubei. Thanks for posting them.

Thanks, jubei. I enjoyed reading those.

Those were both very, very interesting and enjoyable articles - thanks, Jubei. I was quite moved by Gillian's very balanced view of her mother - able to discuss Enid's personal flaws with a view to understanding why she was like that and what elements of her own past influenced her actions, rather than either covering up those issues or simply condemning her. Interesting that both articles were from Australian publications, too!

jubei wrote: I think Enid Blyton books started getting translated in Indonesia in the '80s era. I am not sure what the exact reason Blyton got translated, maybe because they were already popular worldwide. It was a golden era of juvenile novel here in the '80s to mid '90s. Later, this era were taken over by the Japanese comic / manga, started somewhere in the mid '90s.

Jubei, you might not believe this, but EB is pretty much unknown in the US .
Her books are available online in amazon.com, I heard that a few libraries in Pennsylvania have some, but when you check out the children's books sections in independent bookstores or at Barnes & Noble, you won't find a single EB book.
And for that reason (probably) our older grandson has still not touched "Five on a treasure Island" which we gave him 2 years ago for Christmas.

I guess there are too many competitors to Enid Blyton in US, it's a pity that the popularity did not reach there.

BTW, this link confirmed that Indonesia is a big market for EB.
http://www.lostinthepond.com/2014/01/ho ... duwVX2aW8C" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Thanks for the link jubei.I noticed this comment at the end:

Donna said...

I was first introduced to Enid Blyton during a summer-long visit to England in 1974. Since the local children seemed to have ZERO interest in befriending the American kid, I turned to books for companionship and fell in love with The Five Find-Outers and Dog. I have such fond memories of the stories that when the Mystery Series was recently reprinted in hardcover, I ordered the entire set from Amazon UK.
16 January 2014 at 22:21

I was glad it wasn't Five on Finniston Farm she first read and got the wrong impression!!

pete9012S wrote:
I was glad it wasn't Five on Finniston Farm she first read and got the wrong impression!!

Phew yes that would have sent her back to the USA in a huff. I wonder if Enid simply never got the right amount of promotion over there? Any American who reads her books seems to like them yet they never sold well in the USA. Perhaps the huge existing market plus a lack of interest on the publisher's part caused the flop.

Two more Enid Blyton updates on the blog:

http://red-white-cross.blogspot.com/201 ... -1953.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


http://red-white-cross.blogspot.com/201 ... nd-in.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Thanks - they make for interesting reading. It's funny that Enid Blyton was coy about her age. The 1953 article from The Sunday Herald described her as "near 50, at a guess", but in fact she was 56 at the time the piece was printed. I'm sure the article also underestimated her earnings! And was she really "a wife and mother before everything else"?!

There's also a suggestion that publishers rejected the "Mary Pollock" books and that Enid Blyton "eventually persuaded a dour Scottish printer to set them up for her." Could there be any truth in that?

I don't think I knew that Enid Blyton's father and uncle were contributors to The Yellow Book of the 1890s. Information on The Yellow Book can be found here and all 13 volumes have been made available online, so it might be possible to find the contributions by Thomas Blyton and his brother if anyone has the time to look:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Yellow_Book" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I suppose the claim in the newspaper article that Enid Blyton was "the most powerful person in the world", even more powerful than Malenkov or Eisenhower, was tongue-in-cheek. However, politicians come and go while Enid Blyton continues to mould the characters of children worldwide nearly five decades after her death!

I knew the poem 'The Wedding in the Woods' (The Northern Star, October 1925) reminded me of something! Another poem called 'The Pixie's Wedding' is very similar, first published in The Teachers World in June 1931:

In Cuckoo Wood there's a wedding to-day,
And the pixies are there in grand array
To see the marriage of Hoppetty-Ho
With the pretty young pixie, Tippetty-Toe.
The bluebells will ring out a wedding chime,
The nightingales promised to sing all the time,
The hawthorn is throwing confetti around
And spreading a carpet of white on the ground.
Hoppetty's cloak is of poppies red,
Tippetty's veil is of spider's thread.
When they're married they'll live in a toadstool house,
And to keep it clean they've a little brown mouse.
They've asked me to visit them some time soon,
So I'm going on Midsummer's Night in June!