Very interesting that information from Tony about the writing of
The Book of Brownies. Written in 1926, it's not only the first Blyton 'novel', apart from 'The Caravn Goes On' for adults of 1930, its the only one for children until
The Green Goblin Book of 1935 and
The Yellow Fairy Book of 1936. Though none of these books are free-flowing novels like, say, a Famous Five novel, those early efforts are all episodic.
If I understand Tony correctly, the only extant Blyton work log book is the 1923-1926 one. There is not one still in existence about 1935/36 when the two Goblin/Fairy books mentioned above were written. And there's not one about 1937-40 when Enid's writing practice really took off. So it's important in giving clues as to what happened.
In Enid's personal diary for 1926 she writes:
Monday, 1 March, 1926:
'Began my Book of Brownies in a.m. and tore it up in the afternoon because I didn’t like it. Began it again at 4. Hugh and I read all evening.’
Tony tells us that her work log provides the following info:
March 1-4 The Book of Brownies Chapters 1 to 3
March 5-11 Work for Teachers World and a long short story for Newnes
March 12-17 The Book of Brownies Chapters 4 to 8
March 19-28 Teachers World, work for a Newnes Annual, 4 short books for Birn Brothers and 1 book for Nelson
March 29-31 The Book of Brownies Chapters 9 to 11
So you could say she wrote
The Book of Brownies really quickly, in the way she's become famous for. But that would be wrong. In fact, she wrote the first three chapters over four days. Took a week long break. Wrote another five chapters over six days, then took a ten day break (from that book, not from writing as a whole). Only then did she write three more chapters over three days. Tony then goes on to say there was a five day break before she wrote the final chapter of
The Book of Brownies.
Well, that is more than a month and a fair distance from the way
The River of Adventure or a famous Five book was written - in a week - and might explain why this early book (of Brownies) is so episodic. And it may be that much the same went on as far as the 1935, 36 and 37 books were concerned, for those were all episodic as well.
Take the first serial that began to come out at the beginning of 1937,
The Wishing Chair. No doubt Enid launched it by writing a fair few chapters. She may well have taken a break of a week (or a month) before writing another chunk. It now seems obvious that she wouldn't have written such an episodic book with so many chapters all at once. (Granted, as Tony says, we know that she wouldn't have written it one weekly episode at a time either.) There were 36 weekly issues of
Sunny Stories in a row concerning
The Wishing Chair. When the book came out, adventures five, six, seven and eight had been left out, presumably so that the book wasn't too large, and because it didn't matter to the plot! Taking out that section of chapters didn't remove any essential information, action or character development.
So this all adds to the picture of how Enid's ability to write in a sustained way improved over time. In fact it wasn't really there until 1939, one might hypothesise, when
The Treasure Hunters appeared.
"Cough-cough," Sorry, that's me. Dammit, I have to go back to bed.
"Dram me up, Flip!"
Duncan