The Enid Blyton Society

?

In another thread, the inconsistency over the last name of Anne, Dick and Julian is being discussed, as well as the fact that Kirrin Island belong to Aunt Fanny and yet her maiden name was highly unlikely to have been Kirrin. This is just one of a number of 'mistakes' and inconsistencies in the books ... the accuracy of the school series', for instance, really does not stand for close examination as they are positively teeming with errors.

Personally this does not bother me all that much - I tend to think 'well so what'. But I do wonder why it is that Blyton herself never picked up on these errors. One explanation is that, of course, she wrote very, very fast - I gather that she could write a FF book in a five minute bathroom break and wrote the whole of the Adventure series whilst standing in a particularly long queue at the Coop one day - and so perhaps did not take the time to proof read her books as well as she ought. Another is that she simply did not expect the books to be read as minutely as they have been. There are Blyton books that I know pretty much off by heart, that I must have read hundreds of times since I was a child - did Blyton realise that that was going to be the case? Perhaps if she had then she'd have been slightly less cavalier about continuity errors..

Could it be because her intended audience were children, and she thought they wouldn't be so particular about the details?
On the other hand, I think the reason might be that she wrote the books over a number of years, sometimes writing new books in a series because of fan letters demanding more Adventure, or Mystery, or Famous Five books, and she wrote them so quickly that she probably didn't reread the older books. That way it's easy to make mistakes or forget secondary characters.
I believe she would have been very surprised if somebody had told her the impact her books had in a lot of children - who still read them even though they're grown-ups now.

I'm inclined to believe that the limited availability of professional training for writers in Enid Blyton's day also contributed to a lack of rigorous consistency across many book series.

1) There were then only a handful of 'how to write' books, and I don't know of any that were specifically written for children's authors*....probably 'cos those writing mainly for children weren't considered to be 'real' writers!

2) What writers' courses were being offered in the USA of the 1930s I don't know, but I doubt that there were many being run within the British Empire - as it then was, especially with children's authors included in the mix.

One result is that today we have numbers of published (and wannabe) writers who have been far better trained in the techniques and the do's/don'ts of writing fiction series than Enid Blyton ever was, but many of them without a tenth of her creative talent. By itself, technique does not an author make.

Hence the ill-planned 'growed like topsy' feel about far too many book series written before mid-century, and even into the 1970s or 1980s, with even otherwise topnotch writers making a host of (to us) irritating continuity errors from book to book.

'Aurélien Arkadiusz'

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* If anyone here finds such a pre-1930 text they might like to check to see if it was published in more than one [probably rather small] edition.

Yes, ultimately, it is her imagination that makes her stand out and is why the continuity errors - some of which occur within a few pages of one another so I am not sure that they time scale argument really works - do not bother me. She really had a very rare understanding of what children want to read about and how to grab their attention. I do not think that that is ever going to die.

It might sound cynical, but I think Enid simply enjoyed writing, had found a willing and hungry audience, and realised that the quicker she pleased them, the more money she could make, so she didnt worry too much about mistakes. I think she did realise how popular she already was, because she had hundreds of letters from fans to prove it, and hundreds of children showing up on her book signing and story telling sessions.

I'm sure she wouldnt have believed how popular she still is today, and I'm sure she would have been very scornful of the fact (though maybe secretly a little proud!) that ADULTS were enjoying her books as well as children!

It is worth remembering Enid's comment that "critiscism from anyone over the age of twelve doesn't matter". I agree with Robert that she probably just loved writing for children so much that she simply wrote and wrote and wrote. She may have even been in a position that before she was halfway through one book she was already planning the next one, and that next one would have been from an entirely different series. With that intense level of work plus other activities like leaisure and family things and business matters as well it is not really surprising that she made continuity errors. What does surprise me is that the various publishing houses didn't pick up on some of the errors. The editors didn't do a very good job.

As to whether she knew how popular she would become I believe she probably did know within a very short time that she wasw going to sell millions. Perhaps one reason she wrote so fast is that she was afraid that her popularity might wane and she wanted to get as much out there as possible before that happened? As we here know all too well though, her popularity was not going to wane.

Enid's amazing talent was as a storyteller. Who cares if she slipped up a few times? Rather to have 700+ full length stories and a zillion short stories, than 6 perfectly written books that cannot be criticised!

Moonraker wrote: Rather to have 700+ full length stories and a zillion short stories, than 6 perfectly written books that cannot be criticised!

Too true Nigel.

Mais oui Like I said, the slip ups do not bother me, though the obsessive in me likes looking for them anyway. But I would be interested to know if she expected her books to be being read - and discussed by adults - over sixty years after they were written. And let's be honest, if we're still around* then probably they will still be being enjoyed in six HUNDRED years.

*I mean we as in the human race. Probably by that point those of us who post here will not be

Moonraker wrote:Enid's amazing talent was as a storyteller. Who cares if she slipped up a few times? Rather to have 700+ full length stories and a zillion short stories, than 6 perfectly written books that cannot be criticised!

I totally agree with Nigel. As a kid, I dived into the stories and was lost in the adventures of the Famous Five, etc. I wasn't really aware of any slip up's. If I were, then I didn't really care and they were soon forgotten. All I was bothered about was reading Enid's stories and getting away from my nagging parents for a while !! Children are Enid's judges, not us adults. By the amount of books Enid is still selling around the world, I think the children are judging well.
Regards
No6

I don't know if Enid ever thought that even adults would enjoy her books, but she certainly knew that she was going to be popular - her fan-mail was irrefutable proof of that. Also agree with Nigel that her magic was in telling stories and I'm glad she spanned 700+ books - there's also something new to read, then!

When I was a teenager I remember feeling guilty occasionally sneaking looks at old Blyton books, then boxed and in our loft. I felt that there was something 'wrong' with being that age and still wanting to read favourite books from my childhood

I know what you mean, Yak (Moose!) - I felt exactly the same. Now, however, I'm old enough to read children's books fairly openly once again!

I wonder if Enid ever re-read any of her own favourite childhood books when she was an adult. If she succumbed to that same impulse that drives many of us here then perhaps it may have crossed her mind that some of her own child readers would return to her books in later life. As far as I can remember it just was not that socially acceptable back in the 70's and 80's to be an adult Blyton reader. The recent Blyton renaissance and the general opening up of attitudes nowadays peerhaps make it easier to have an interest in Enid Blyton. Or perhaps its an age thing, I dont know. I'm pretty sure that I would never have admitted being a Blyton fan in the 80's or 90's but nowadays it just doesn't bother me.

Lucky Star wrote: As far as I can remember it just was not that socially acceptable back in the 70's and 80's to be an adult Blyton reader.

Hmm, it certainly wan't socially or educationally acceptable to be a child Blyton reader in the late 50s. It didn't stop me, though!