Did Enid approve all the paperback covers?

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Re: Did Enid approve all the paperback covers?

Post by pete9012S »

Collection of 6 Vintage Enid Blyton Books-including 1st edition
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Collection-o ... SwjS9ZgtPN" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Can you spot the first edition? Do you care about 1st edition paperbacks? I can't say I ever have.
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Re: Did Enid approve all the paperback covers?

Post by Rob Houghton »

To be fair, some first edition paperbacks from 1962 onward - such as the first ever Enid Blyton title to appear in paperback (I forget the title!) and the first editions of other Blyton series in paperback such as the Galliano series, Naughtiest Girl and Adventurous Four series, etc etc, are very collectable today.
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Re: Did Enid approve all the paperback covers?

Post by John Pickup »

I'm quite sure the first Armada paperback was The Adventurous Four closely followed by The Naughtiest Girl In The School. The first Enid paperback I bought was Mystery Of The Burnt Cottage, it was the first book by her I ever owned. I collected all of that series in the sixties. Quite literally, most fell apart at the seams, it happened regularly with my Armada books.
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Re: Did Enid approve all the paperback covers?

Post by Rob Houghton »

thanks John - yes, I thought it might be The Adventurous Four, but wasn't 100% sure. :-) I have a few of the early 1960's paperbacks - hurrah For The Circus, The Mystery of Holly Lane, The Mystery of the Burnt Cottage, amongst others. I love the covers and internal illustrations - but my main complaint is that the binding is hopeless. Its almost impossible to open them without the pages cracking and coming loose! I think that's why very good condition paperbacks from this era are quite expensive.

The first Find Outer book I read was 'The Mystery of the Missing Necklace' - which was in one of these early paperbacks, bought from a school jumble sale for 2p! All the pages were loose, and when I got to the end I found that the last couple of pages were missing! It was around 20 years before I read the last two pages, lol!
Last edited by Rob Houghton on 30 Nov 2017, 19:34, edited 1 time in total.
'Oh voice of Spring of Youth
hearts mad delight,
Sing on, sing on, and when the sun is gone
I'll warm me with your echoes
through the night.'

(E. Blyton, Sunday Times, 1951)



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Re: Did Enid approve all the paperback covers?

Post by IceMaiden »

pete9012S wrote:I know Tony has an extensive collection of paperback books - Armada I think?

I also have a large bookcase full of all my childhood Enid Blyton's that were bought for me as kind gifts from my close relatives.
Many are inscribed with loving dedications from my relatives. Although many are now bruised and battered, I just can't bring myself to chuck them out.

I have the same affinity with these well thumbed paperbacks as many do with the hardbacks. I love all my hardbacks too and agree with you that they also are very special.
Tony Summerfield wrote:A few Armada books.
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That is a marvellous collection and is honestly the first time I have ever seen a paperback 'library' anywhere! I think the reason I don't like the paperbacks is because I grew up with the hardbacks of the Famous Five, Barney, Adventurous Four and various others as they were my dad's original copies. After seeing Eileen Soper's FF illustrations from the off, the paperback illustrations didn't feel right, the characters on the cover weren't the characters in the books I knew, they were strangers who I had no attachment to. To me, they were the book equivalent of a tv re-cast of a favourite character. After reading other replies it seems your thoughts on the paperbacks depend very much on whether you had them as a child or not and/or whose illustrations you were introduced to first.
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Re: Did Enid approve all the paperback covers?

Post by Rob Houghton »

Yes - definitely. To me the characters depicted by George Brook, Eileen Soper and Dorothy Wheeler etc were all 'strangers' - it took ages to get used to their depictions after a 'lifetime' of Derek Lucas, Betty Maxey and Rene Cloke. :-)
'Oh voice of Spring of Youth
hearts mad delight,
Sing on, sing on, and when the sun is gone
I'll warm me with your echoes
through the night.'

(E. Blyton, Sunday Times, 1951)



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Re: Did Enid approve all the paperback covers?

Post by pete9012S »

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Yes, Rob. In the case of the Find-Outers Books I only ever saw the versions above in my youth. It was much later in a second hand book shop that I came across the originals with their much different front covers and in some cases different internal illustrations.

They seemed to belong to a different generation to my paperbacks. But now that I have bought and collected them all, I have grown to love them just as much as my initial paperback versions.

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Re: Did Enid approve all the paperback covers?

Post by Rob Houghton »

some of those were the ones I grew up with too, Pete - though I had earlier versions of Pantomime cat etc.

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One of my favourite covers was 'Tally Ho Cottage'.

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and Holly Lane -

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I didn't read the whole series as a child - in fact only about five of them - and I can remember being pretty disgusted when I later bought 'The Mystery of the Burnt Cottage' aged about 20 and the covers had mutated into some ugly kids posing for photos, lol! I was a 'cover snob' even back then and I never bought another Find Outer book until I found the hardback versions! :-D

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'Oh voice of Spring of Youth
hearts mad delight,
Sing on, sing on, and when the sun is gone
I'll warm me with your echoes
through the night.'

(E. Blyton, Sunday Times, 1951)



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Re: Did Enid approve all the paperback covers?

Post by pete9012S »

Image..Image

Yes Rob, my mum bought me the version of Tally Ho shown above and I too have a really special affection for that cover.


Next she bought me Burnt Cottage and I suddenly realised I had started to read the series out of order!
It seemed incredible after reading Tally Ho first that Larry should even consider himself to be the leader of The Find Outers!
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Re: Did Enid approve all the paperback covers?

Post by Rob Houghton »

Yes, like you I read Burnt Cottage a long time after some of the others, such as Holly lane, Pantomime Cat, Missing Necklace and Secret Room etc, so I was quite shocked to find Larry thinking he could be the leader!! :shock: :lol:
'Oh voice of Spring of Youth
hearts mad delight,
Sing on, sing on, and when the sun is gone
I'll warm me with your echoes
through the night.'

(E. Blyton, Sunday Times, 1951)



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Re: Did Enid approve all the paperback covers?

Post by Courtenay »

The first one I read was Secret Room, in which the leadership was decisively passed over from Larry to Fatty, so I was aware of that when I read Burnt Cottage a few years later and was interested to discover just how the Find-Outers started out. It does seem a bit funny even now, though, to read the first two books and find Larry assuming he should be the leader because he always is, when even that early on it's obvious that Fatty is the real driving force (and resident genius) of the Find-Outers... :wink:
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Re: Did Enid approve all the paperback covers?

Post by Rob Houghton »

It's odd I was so surprised about the leadership change, when I read Burnt Cottage - because like you Courtenay, I'd read The Secret Room quite a few years before. However, I think I never read all the way through The Secret Room as I found the beginning boring as a child and don't know whether I read further than a page or two! :oops:
'Oh voice of Spring of Youth
hearts mad delight,
Sing on, sing on, and when the sun is gone
I'll warm me with your echoes
through the night.'

(E. Blyton, Sunday Times, 1951)



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Re: Did Enid approve all the paperback covers?

Post by Courtenay »

:lol: I'm glad I did read further than a page or two that first time, as once Fatty came into the story with his disguises and other detective tricks, it became tremendously exciting. I remember my dad lent me an old fountain pen so we could try using orange juice for invisible ink just like Fatty did, then making it appear by heating the paper, and I was delighted to find it really worked! :D
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Re: Did Enid approve all the paperback covers?

Post by John Pickup »

Going back to the covers, I really like the original Armada illustrations from the early sixties for the Find Outer books. Most of them were done by Charles Stewart I believe. Many of Enid's books were issued by Armada in the first half of the decade so there would have been plenty of art work for her to approve.
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Re: Did Enid approve all the paperback covers?

Post by IceMaiden »

Rob Houghton wrote:Yes - definitely. To me the characters depicted by George Brook, Eileen Soper and Dorothy Wheeler etc were all 'strangers' - it took ages to get used to their depictions after a 'lifetime' of Derek Lucas, Betty Maxey and Rene Cloke. :-)
For me that is definitely the other way around! I've never been very good at seeing a character I like portrayed by someone else though, I'm someone who would rather watch a grainy bad quality 40+ year old original than a new picture perfect version of something :P . I do quite like the illustrations in the Deans editions but saying that I've only read the short stories in them not the main series novels.

A lot of it is also due to the fact the original illustrations go with the original time the books are set, making them more 'authentic', no matter how much I try I cannot picture the Five in jeans and trainers as the paperback drawings depict, which makes it even harder to see these characters that I already have no attachment to as the familiar characters I love and know.
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I want an old fashioned house, with an old fashioned fence
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