The Enid Blyton Society

I think so. My 1941 edition is just over 2.5cm thick, including the cover, if that's a help!

I've just measured mine and it's 5/8 in, thinner than Spiggy Holes but thicker than Killimooin. It's also 190 pages and I've just really noticed that the last few pages are cut shorter the the rest by about 1/4 in at the bottom! They've not been cut as their too perfect and equal so it must be a printing or binding error!

IceMaiden wrote:I've just measured mine and it's 5/8 in,

This thread is beginning to sound like an entry from 'The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole'!

Mine is 1 inch thick (including covers), but still has 190 pages.

Hilarious posts!

I often wonder when I see discussions like this, why have I bothered to spend thousands of hours in the Cave!

http://www.enidblytonsociety.co.uk/book ... ret+Island" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

thanks Tony, for the reminder!

Although it doesn't actually tell us the measurements of the 1941 edition, or subsequent editions... Although fatter than the other editions, my 1941 edition seems to be thinner than the first edition, which was 1 and a quarter inches thick, compared to the 1941 ed being only 1 inch thick!

Resurrecting an old thread - I found a real bargain in Oxfam in Troon for £4.99, The Secret Island from 1941 which similar to the other posts has 190 pages, a beautiful frontispiece in colour and is a inch and a quarter thick. The illustrations are far more numerous my 1992 copy and I much prefer the earlier illustrations. The children really do look young and somehow the pathos of the situation is far more evident. There are also a few editing changes - for example when the children were as brown as gyspies - changed to dark as can be ; currency updated ; gramophone changed to radio (I presume it was a wind up gramophone) and all references to whipping removed; Christmas toys in the girls' stockings changed - dolls, needle books and balls replaced with soaps and bath bubbles. And no "THE END" at the end of the book, I suppose the editors thought that was redundant.
With the realisation that the children were being regularly whipped by their aunt and uncle I can't help point out a fundamental weakness in an otherwise fantastic story - how did Captain Arnold and his wife had such horrible siblings and why didn't they realise it. But of course there would have been no story.

What a fantastic fine Irene! Well done.

Thanks, Irene for re-vivifying this old thread. I've never read it before and it's very interesting, and immediately stimulated the following thoughts. I went to Tony's link and appreciated enormously the care he has taken in distinguishing different formats in 'The Secret Island'. I wonder who 'IM' is on that reprint dust-jacket. Has anyone come across an illustrator from those times with those initials? As for book thicknesses, they vary according to the quality of paper used. During the Great Depression were published very thick books with very thick pages (like blotting paper to those of us who can remember such things) to disguise the fact that they had very few pages. My set of Five Find-Outers, proudly resplendent in dust-jackets, vary in thickness according to the quality of paper used which I think is part of their charm. If they are very early reprints they tend to be slim i.e. Hidden House (1961) takes up 30 mm of shelf space, Pantomime Cat (1949)18 mm and Invisible Thief (1953) 25 mm. As for abridgement, the most interesting I have come across is not in an Enid Blyton (though a thesis could probably be done on that), but in the 1890s when pages mentioning the dispossession of the aboriginal owners of their ancestral land were removed from editions of 'Seven Little Australians' by Ethel Turner and it took almost a century to get those pages back into print.

Thanks both Judith and Peter for that. I will be posting a comparison of the second book, Spiggy Holes, which is my favourite. In terms of abridgement the most I ha\ve come across was in the wonderful Swish of the Curtain (Pamela Brown) where there were several chapters cut from the recent version compared to the .old version. So I bought an early version and had to tack on the dust jacket from my newer version. I don't have room to keep different versions of books so I just keep the my favourite, but from recollection, it was over 50 pages difference !

What a shame modern readers don't get the full text. I loved 'The Swish of the Curtain' as a child and spent precious pocket money on the whole series and didn't regret it as they were all so good.

Gosh I must check my copy of 'The Swish of the Curtain' it is quite an early one. Due to Enid stimulating my love of theatre & writing plays I loved Pamela Brown books and still have most of them and enjoy to read them every now and then.

Your copy of The Secret Island sounds like a real bargain, Irene! How annoying that so many alterations were made to the text later on.

I hadn't realised that Pamela Brown's The Swish of the Curtain books had been abridged like that! I bought two titles from that series as a child and borrowed at least one more from the library, as well as watching the TV adaptation of the first book. My sister and I and two friends of ours used to perform plays during the school holidays (for an audience of family, friends and neighbours) and I think we were influenced by books like The Swish of the Curtain and Noel Streatfeild's Party Frock.

Sorry we are digressing here but on the Swish of the Curtain my brother has my book as he is kindly redoing the front dust cover which was somewhat dilapidated so I cannot check it. However I can tell you that one entire chapter had been missed out and that was all about them tobogging on one sled near Christmas. So if your book has that chapter included then you have the unabridged copy, and if not then you have the abridged copy.

Thanks "'Irene Malory Towers" for this information. I have a 1944 copy and a 1953 copy and they both have the tobogganing chapter. The picture of them all on the toboggan together is wonderful.