Omnibus Bargains!

The books! Over seven hundred of them and still counting...
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Moonraker
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Omnibus Bargains!

Post by Moonraker »

I've just found two really inexpensive omnibuses in a Salisbury bookshop. The Family Collection and The Wishing Chair Collection; £3.99 each. I hope that they are not 'modernised' too much. I've not read the WC books since I was about 6, and I don't think I've ever read all the Family stories. Ahhh, bring on the sofa and a pint of London Pride!!! :twisted:
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Mac99
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two more omnibus bargains

Post by Mac99 »

just returned from asda and they have famous five and naughtiest girl collection for sale with each having three books in the omnibus. price @£3.80.

mac
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booklover
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Omnibus oddities

Post by booklover »

I've picked up "The O'Clock Tales Collection" from Dean, with Five, Six, Seven and Eight O'Clock Tales in the one book. Great idea! One problem - you only get the first four stories from Eight O'Clock Tales, and miss out on the last seven stories that are in the individual volume. This is disappointing - the book is just over 500 pages - if it's already that big you'd think they could have included the last few stories. So what you get is The Not Quite O'Clock Tales Collection.

I saw the Naughtiest Girl Collection in a shop recently here in Australia. This is the most bizarre omnibus I've seen. It contains The Naughtiest Girl Again, The Naughtiest Girl is a Monitor and Here's the Naughtiest Girl (good, as you don't find it very often) - but here's the rub - The Naughtiest Girl in the School, the first book in the series, is not included! Whatever were they thinking?
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booklover
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Wishing Chair Omnibus

Post by booklover »

Hi Moonraker, I too have just picked up the Wishing Chair Collection by Dean. This is a very interesting compilation comprising:

(1) The Adventures of the Wishing Chair;
(2) The Wishing Chair Again (both previously included in the Rewards Series published by Dean & Son (or Dean)); and
(3) More Wishing Chair Tales.

More Wishing Chair Tales is a book I'd never heard of. (Dean didn't publish this story in the Rewards Series - as confirmed by the inside cover of the omnibus which states that Dean first published the book in 1997.)

Does anyone know when Blyton wrote More Wishing Chair Tales? And where has it been hiding all these years?
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Kirrin
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wow

Post by Kirrin »

these are so cheap! thanks.
Raci
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Post by Raci »

Does anyone know when Blyton wrote More Wishing Chair Tales? And where has it been hiding all these years?
Hi Booklover :D

It might be the short (4 chapters) story that is part of Enid Blyton's Omnibus!

It is called Good-Old Wishing Chair and the 4 chapters are called:

Home for Half-Term
Cree-ee-eak
An Adventurous Night
Land of Wishes

Also - the other possibility is that they have printed this book similarly to the Dragon paperbacks that split the adventures of the wishing chair into two books: 1 called adventures of the wishing-chair and the other called more adventures of the wishing-chair.

Hope that helps. :D

Could you let me know if these are the chapters in "more wishing chair tales" because if they are different ones I will try and get hold of a copy of this book.
Thanks :D
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Anita Bensoussane
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Wishing-Chair

Post by Anita Bensoussane »

Hi,

I have a book called More Wishing-Chair Stories (Mammoth, published in 2000) and I'm wondering if the contents are the same as the Dean More Wishing Chair Tales. It has the four stories/chapters from Enid Blyton's Omnibus! as well as 11 more stories/chapters. A note at the front says that the stories were taken from Sunny Stories and The Adventures of the Wishing-Chair, but it doesn't say which ones came from which source. Does anyone know?

That explains why my 1970s Dean & Son Ltd edition of Adventures of the Wishing-Chair has a note saying that it's "abridged" - some chapters had obviously been removed since the original publication. Why?

Also, my 1970s Dean & Son Ltd edition of The Wishing-Chair Again has been "revised." What changes were made, I wonder, and why?

Anita
Tony Summerfield
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Wishing-Chair

Post by Tony Summerfield »

The history of the Wishing-Chair is not all that complicated but the various Dragon and Dean editions often messed things up as there were stories left over. There were just the two books - Adventures of the Wishing-Chair and The Wishing-Chair Again. The first edition of the original book had 36 chapter/stories, but five of the stories were then dropped out of all subsequent editions. There were also the four chapters/stories in the Enid Blyton's Omnibus book and two stories in Sunny Stories - 'The Wishing-Chair Again' and 'Santa Claus and the Wishing-Chair'. This makes a possible 67 chapters/stories and 66 of these are used in the 3 Mammoth books published in 2000. The only story to escape was 'The Wishing-Chair Again', a two part story in Sunny Stories Nos 91 and 92. More Wishing-Chair Stories was the first time that the original missing five chapters were republished - so this book contains 10 stories from the first book, 4 stories from the Omnibus and one story from Sunny Stories.

I hope this sorts out rather than muddles!

Best wishes
Tony
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Anita Bensoussane
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Wishing-Chair

Post by Anita Bensoussane »

Thanks very much, Tony. That clears up a few things. I'm still curious to know whether the Dean More Wishing Chair Tales (contained within The Wishing Chair Collection) has the same contents as the Mammoth More Wishing-Chair Stories. The Mammoth book contains the following stories/chapters:

1 Home for Half-Term
2 Cree-ee-eak
3 An Adventurous Night
4 Land of Wishes
5 Santa Claus and the Wishing-Chair
6 The Witch's Cat
7 The Dear-Me Goblin
8 The Adventure of the Green Enchanter
9 Peter's Own Adventure
10 The Disappearing Land
11 The Old, Old Man
12 Topsy-Turvy Land
13 The Chair Runs Away Again
14 The Land of Scally-Wags
15 The Prince's Spells

Could anyone tell me whether the Dean More Wishing Chair Tales differs from that?

Thanks,
Anita
Raci
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Post by Raci »

Hi Anita!

Do you also have the mammoth versions of 'The Adventures of the Wishing-chair' and 'The Wishing-chair again'? If so do they contain the exact same chapters/stories as the Dean versions?

I'll definatly have to get the mammoth 'More Wishing-chair Stories', I hadn't realised before this post started there were so many other stories I hadn't read.

Hi Booklover

I would also be interested in knowing if the chapters Anita lists are the same as those in More Wishing Tales.

Also does it include anywhere - 'The Wishing-Chair Again', a two part story in Sunny Stories Nos 91 and 92. - mentioned by Tony as not being included in the Mammoth version?

:D Thanks everyone for all your help! :D
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Wishing Chair

Post by booklover »

Hello everyone! Thanks for all the responses. Your comments are much appreciated. :D

I have checked The Wishing Chair Collection again, and can confirm the following, regarding content:

The Adventures of the Wishing Chair would appear to be the same as the 1971 Dean & Son edition - ie 26 chapters - chapter 1: The Strange Old Shop; chapter 26: The Snoogle's Castle, with all the same chapters in between. (I say "would appear" because I haven't checked the content word for word.)

The Wishing Chair Again would also appear to be the same as the 1972 Dean & Son edition - ie 25 chapters: chapter 1: Home for the Holidays; chapter 25: Home Again - And Goodbye! - again with all the same chapters in between.

In response to Anita's query, More Wishing Chair Tales contains the following 17 chapters:
1 The Witch's Cat (6)
2 The Dear-Me Goblin (7)
3 The Adventure of the Green Enchanter (8) (eight) (for some reason I got a smiley when I typed the number eight)
4 Peter's Own Adventure (9)
5 The Old, Old Man (11)
6 Topsy-Turvy Land (12)
7 The Chair Runs Away Again (13)
8 The Land of Scally-Wags (14)
9 The Prince's Spells (15)
10 The Last Adventure of All (-)
11 Home for Half-Term (1)
12 Cree-ee-eak (2)
13 An Adventurous Night (3)
14 Land of Wishes (4)
15 Santa Claus and the Wishing Chair (5)
16 More About the Wishing Chair (-)
17 The End of the Adventure (-)

(The number in brackets is the chapter number in the Mammoth book More Wishing Chair Stories to which Anita has referred.)

So the main points to emerge are:

1. Most of the chapters are the same as the Mammoth edition but the chapter order is significantly different! Surely Mammoth is correct here? ie Dean's chapter 11 "Home for Half-Term" should be the first chapter, followed by chapters 12-15, then chapters 1-10.

2. The Dean edition contains three chapters not in the Mammoth edition, namely 10 The Last Adventure of All; 16 More About the Wishing Chair; and 17 The End of the Adventure.

3. The Dean edition does not include chapter 10 from the Mammoth edition, The Disappearing Land. (I guess this may be the same story as chapter 10 of the 1971 edition of The Adventures of the Wishing Chair called "The Disappearing Island"? If so, that would explain why Dean left it out.)

So that leaves me with the following questions:

1. Tony says there are 67 individual chapters, but on the above analysis, you end up with 68! Another puzzle! (And another guess - that the story Tony refers to called "The Wishing Chair Again" is reproduced as chapters 16 and 17 of More Wishing Chair Tales - with the name of chapter 16 changed because it clashes with the title of the second Wishing Chair book.)

2. Which is the "correct" order of the chapters for More Wishing Chair Tales? Mammoth would seem to be correct in the order of their compilation - but for completeness they should have added "The Last Adventure of All" and then probably the last two chapters from Dean.

best wishes

booklover
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Post by Raci »

:D Hi Booklover!
Thanks for your help!
Raci
Tony Summerfield
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Wishing-Chair

Post by Tony Summerfield »

I have just answered at length and someone phoned me and I lost the lot!! Paul you have anyway answered everything for me and you are quite right, the final story is the other one from Sunny Stories divided into two as it was originally. So this Dean book - The Wishing Chair Collection - has everything in it and in this country costs just £4.99!!

Best wishes
Tony
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Anita Bensoussane
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Wishing-Chair

Post by Anita Bensoussane »

Hi,

I took the children swimming this afternoon and made a detour on the way home so we could pop into the bookshop and pick up a copy of The Wishing-Chair Collection. Great value, as others have said. Anyway, it turns out that "More About the Wishing-Chair" and "The End of the Adventure" were put together by Mammoth and called "The Disappearing Land" (not the same as "The Disappearing Island" in Adventures of the Wishing-Chair.) I don't recall having read "The Last Adventure of All" anywhere before, and it seems that it wasn't really the last adventure because it talks about Mollie and Peter preparing to go away to boarding-school for the first time. I've read other adventures in which they have come home from boarding-school for the holidays. Working out the "correct" order for all the stories/chapters would be very difficult, I think, Booklover.

Raci, in answer to your question I'm afraid I don't have Mammoth editions of Adventures of the Wishing-Chair and The Wishing-Chair Again, so I don't know if they're the same as the Deans editions. I expect they're pretty much the same, though they may have been slightly edited/updated. Does anyone know?

Anita
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Post by Raci »

it seems that "The Last Adventure of All" wasn't really the last adventure because .......... Working out the "correct" order for all the stories/chapters would be very difficult.
Hi Anita :D

I've just got hold of an earlier copy of "Adventures Of The Wishing Chair" and 'The Last Adventure Of All' is called this because it is the very last chapter in the first book.


This is the order all of chapters/stories were published in:

1937 - Adventures of the Wishing-Chair

1) The Strange Old Shop
2) The Giant's Castle
3) The Grabbit Gnomes
4) The Ho-Ho Wizard
5) The Witch's Cat
6) The Dear-Me Goblin
7) The Adventure Of The Green Enchanter
8.) Peter's Own Adventure
9) The Old, Old Man
10) Poor Lost Chinky
11) The Land Of Dreams
12) The Runaway Chair
13) The Lost Cat
14) The Witch Kirri-Kirri
15) The Disappearing Island
16) The Magician's Party
17) The Wishing-Chair Is Foolish
18.) The Polite Goblin
19) The Spinning House
20) Witch Snippit
21) The Silly Boy
22) The Windy Wizard
23) Mr Twisty
24) Two Bad Children
25) The Horrid Quarrel
26) The Enchanter Clip-Clap
27) The Strange Tower
28.) The Great Escape
29) Big-Ears The Goblin
30) The Snoogle
31) The Snoogle's Castle
32) Topsy Turvyland
33) The Chair Runs Away Again
34) The Land Of Scally-Wags
35) The Prince's Spells
36) The Last Adventure Of All


1938 - Short Stories

37) The Wishing Chair Again
38.) The End Of The Adventure
39) Santa Claus And The Wishing-Chair
40) An Adventure With Santa Claus


1950 - The Wishing-Chair Again

41) Home For The Holidays
42) Off On An Adventure
43) Where Can The Wishing-Chair Be?
44) Hunting For The Chair
45) Off To Mr Spells Of Wizard Cottage
46) Mr Spells Is Very Magic
47) Off On Another Adventure
48.) The Slipperies Play A Trick
49) Mollie And The Growing Ointment
50) Off To Find The Toys
51) Mister Grim's School For Bad Brownies
52) Chinky Is Naughty
53) Home, Wishing-Chair, Home
54) Mister Blacky's Strange Army
55) Off To The Land Of Goodies
56) An Afternoon With Cousin Pipkin
57) A Most Alarming Tale
58.) Mr Spells' Mother
59) Away On Another Adventure
60) Wandering Castle At Last
61) A Very Exciting Time
62) Winks And Chinky Are Silly
63) What Happened In The Land Of Spells
64) The Island Of Suprises
65) Home Again - And Goodbye


1952 - Enid Blyton's Omnibus, Good Old Wishing-Chair!

66) Home For Half-Term
67) Cree-ee-eak
68.) An Adventurous Night
69) Land Of Wishes

The chapters in red, blue & orange are the ones not in Deans 71/72 well known editions.
The chapters in blue I have added from Tony's next post - these are the chapters only in the original edition.
The chapters in orange are the short stories added from another of Tony's posts.
Tony - Thanks for all your help getting the order straight
Last edited by Raci on 03 Jun 2005, 19:56, edited 2 times in total.
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