What Enid Blyton book have you recently bought?

[Rob Houghton]

Admittedly, 'The Old, Old Man' chapter is pretty insignificant and doesn't even involve a trip on the chair, so I can see why it might be removed - but as Courtenay says, lopping off the last four chapters seems very inconsiderate and spoils the rounding off of the story.

[Anita Bensoussane]

Unless editors take great care when abridging texts, parts get left in which no longer make sense. When I read Adventures of the Wishing-Chair as a child I was puzzled by a couple of sentences in the chapter 'The Disappearing Island' which read: "The chair flew on and on, and came to the towers and spires of Fairyland. They glittered in the sun and Peter wanted to go down and visit the Prince and Princess they had once rescued." I wondered who the Prince and Princess were as I didn't remember reading about the rescue. It turned out that the children had rescued Prince Merry and Princess Sylfai in a run of chapters which had been removed - 'The Witch's Cat', 'The Dear-Me Goblin', 'The Adventure of the Green Enchanter' and 'Peter's Own Adventure'. Those chapters had only ever been included in the first edition of 1937!

[Courtenay]

Now that's silly... you'd think they might have read through the entire book very carefully before deciding what to cut out, but apparently not!

I wonder if that line about the Prince and Princess was also left in the Dean edition? I don't remember it, and I'm sure it would have puzzled me too.

[Anita Bensoussane]

Yes, my copy is the Dean edition and the sentences about the Prince and Princess are near the beginning of the chapter 'The Disappearing Island'.

[Courtenay]

There we go then. I'm amazed no-one picked up that slip and edited it in subsequent printings!

I'll have to buy a copy of More Wishing-Chair Stories to read the missing episodes — or else hang out for a first edition of the original! (The closest I can find on eBay are two second editions of 1939, which I assume were already abridged, and in any case they're either too expensive or in too poor condition for me to want to bother even if they did have the deleted chapters.)

[Kate Mary]

I have the 2002 Dean hardback edition of The Wishing Chair Collection which I believe has all the stories in it with the Rene Cloke illustrations for Adventures of the Wishing Chair and Wishing Chair Again but the rest of the stories have their original illustrations and not the Anthony Lewis ones that are in the paperback edition of More Wishing Chair Stories.

Somewhere on the forums all the stories are listed in the correct reading order but I can't find it at the moment but I printed it off so I know it exists.

[Anita Bensoussane]

Here's a link to the list of stories in reading order:

http://www.enidblytonsociety.co.uk/foru ... rder+#p731" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


If you've got the 3-in-1 The Wishing Chair Collection (Dean), this post is helpful:

http://www.enidblytonsociety.co.uk/foru ... rder+#p937" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I'll have to buy a copy of More Wishing-Chair Stories to read the missing episodes — or else hang out for a first edition of the original! (The closest I can find on eBay are two second editions of 1939, which I assume were already abridged, and in any case they're either too expensive or in too poor condition for me to want to bother even if they did have the deleted chapters.)

The other thread has a post from Tony which says five chapters had been removed by the time the second edition was published in October 1939:

There can't be much that needs to be cleared up now on Adventures of the Wishing-Chair, but let me state again that only the first edition published in November 1937 had 36 chapters. By the time the second edition was published in October 1939 it had been reduced to 31 chapters and from 248 pages down to 216. Newnes might have felt that they needed to lose 32 pages to make the book pay - I don't know!

[Kate Mary]

Thanks Anita. It's difficult to search the forums on my phone, especially when I've mislaid my specs. I have now found them thank goodness.

[Anita Bensoussane]

Glad you found them, Kate. Trouble is, you need your specs to look for your specs!

[pete9012S]

I have never read any of the Wishing Chair books yet.

I checked my library and I have The Wishing Chair Collection,Enid Blyton's Omnibus and a pdf copy of The Enchanted Wood (1939) containing 26 chapters and the original illustrations.

Sorry if I'm repeating earlier posts,but just to recap:
Do I have the whole collection of all the stories,or do I need any other book?

[Kate Mary]

Where did you get a pdf Enchanted Wood Pete? And yes you have all the Wishing Chair stories in the Collection, that is the copy I have.

[Rob Houghton]

There we go then. I'm amazed no-one picked up that slip and edited it in subsequent printings!

I'll have to buy a copy of More Wishing-Chair Stories to read the missing episodes — or else hang out for a first edition of the original! (The closest I can find on eBay are two second editions of 1939, which I assume were already abridged, and in any case they're either too expensive or in too poor condition for me to want to bother even if they did have the deleted chapters.)

The best thing about 'More Wishing Chair Stories' is that it contains all the original illustrations.

[pete9012S]

Where did you get a pdf Enchanted Wood Pete? And yes you have all the Wishing Chair stories in the Collection, that is the copy I have.

pm sent.

[IceMaiden]

I have gone through your list, Ice Maiden and you have quite a number of titles that could fetch good price if you decided to sell them.

Thanks Sixret I had no idea! They just seemed like a good amount of books for thirty quid at the time! I forgot also that House At The Corner is in a dustwrapper, not sure how I omitted that .

With the Wishing Chair I also didn't know there were chapters cut as my childhood book wasn't a Newnes or Dean version. It was a fawn coloured Enid Blyton Collection hardback with both Wishing Chair books and a third section of various short stories that my mum bought for me from Woolworths before I was born as she'd had a feeling I'd like it! She must have known Like Courtenay's version, the end of the first book ends abruptly with 'that was the children's secret!', before starting the next book straight on the following page and those 5 chapters missing. I have just been to look in my Newnes edition which is 1964, 'The Old, Old Man' is included, but the others aren't and it ends in the same abrupt manner.

[Rob Houghton]

I have just been to look in my Newnes edition which is 1964, 'The Old, Old Man' is included, but the others aren't and it ends in the same abrupt manner.

Oh dear!! That sounds as if Courtenay's new acquisition will also be chopped at the end then - no better than the Dean version!!