The Enid Blyton Society

Merged with an existing thread.

As well as bidding on some rarer books I've just bought a job lot of 63 Enid blyton books (to put away for my 2 year old obviously, nothing at all to do with me wanting them..

I blame this forum for this

Can't wait to get them...its a cheap bundle of various condition paperbacks and hardback and none are rare at all but I'm still excited:-)

Tra-la-la-la, hooray, hooray!
My Noddy books arrived today!
So little money I had to pay
For eight fine books, so bright and... cheerful.

Seriously, I landed a bargain here (thanks again to Sixret for the eBay tip-off). Eight of the original series of Noddy books, all with dust jackets and in good to very good condition (various little bits of minor damage to the edges of the jackets and one with a water stain on the spine, but nothing really serious) — all for less than £1 each, even including the postage!

None of them are first editions, despite what the seller said (just because they don't have multiple dates written inside them, I suppose... er, if book 3 of the series has all 24 titles listed on the back flap, it is clearly NOT a first edition ), but I wasn't looking for that anyway. It'll be enough if I can eventually collect the whole series in early editions in reasonable condition. These books are absolute classics and I couldn't get enough of them when I was little... well, actually, even when I was somewhat beyond the intended age range (I clearly remember being absolutely hooked by Well Done, Noddy! when I was 11)...

The titles I now have, and their number in the series of 24, are:

Noddy and His Car (3)
Noddy Gets Into Trouble (8)
Noddy and the Magic Rubber (9)
Do Look Out, Noddy! (15)
You're a Good Friend, Noddy! (16)
Noddy Has an Adventure (17)
Noddy Goes to Sea (18)
Mr Plod and Little Noddy (22)

And the extra good thing is, apart from Noddy and the Magic Rubber and Noddy Has an Adventure, I haven't read these before, so I've got plenty to keep me occupied now!

Hayleymoomin wrote:
As well as bidding on some rarer books I've just bought a job lot of 63 Enid blyton books (to put away for my 2 year old obviously, nothing at all to do with me wanting them..

I blame this forum for this

Can't wait to get them...its a cheap bundle of various condition paperbacks and hardback and none are rare at all but I'm still excited:-)

Well done, Hayley! I'm sure your 2-year-old will enjoy them in time... and meanwhile, you could always dip into them yourself, just a bit...

Well done, Hayley and Courtenay!

Sounds like an excellent buy, Courtenay! I was just like you with these Noddy books, and read many of mine as a child when I was past the intended age-range - I was probably 8, 9 and 10 when I read most of them.

Glad to know I'm not the only one.

They came today!! A few I've never read but had known about and a few more of never even heard of...will be checking the cafe but these are

The queer adventure
The treasure hunters
The put an rights
The adventure of the secret necklace

My 2 favourites in the bundle are 2 hardback barney mysteries published in 1970 in brilliant condition

Sounds like a brilliant haul, Hayleymoomin! I haven't read most of the ones you mention, but I must put in a word for The Treasure Hunters. It was my older sister's favourite when we were little and she gave it such glowing recommendations, while I was just starting out with the Faraway Tree and the Wishing-Chair and Noddy and so on (we were both brought up on a steady diet of Blyton!), that I soon went on to The Treasure Hunters and absolutely loved it as well.

It's aimed at relatively young readers but is an absolutely ripping yarn — the plot itself is not particularly original (I won't give it away!), but it's the way Enid tells the story that makes it so exciting and engaging. Even for a relatively simple story, there are some thrilling twists in it — and one of the things I most appreciate about it is that Susan, the one girl among the three main characters (two brothers and a sister), is in many ways the most imaginative and adventurous, and there are a number of key points in the story where it's her ideas that drive the quest forward. Which puts paid to the old claim that Enid was sexist!

Congratulations - a great haul! All four of those mentioned above are well worth reading, for various reasons. I agree about The Treasure Hunters.

The Put-em-Rights is also an interesting book, with several plot strands all bound together expertly. I particularly love how its about a bunch of kids who decide (rather big-headedly) that it's up to them to put all the troubled souls in the village 'right' - but in fact they are taught quite a few lessons themselves.

Well done, Hayley!

Just received the 1944 Daily Mail annual - the only DM annual edited by Enid Blyton. I have them all, including this one, but not in good wrappers. This latest one has a good dust wrapper and is in excellent condition.

That's very unusual with good dust wrapper - well done Rob.

Just won a 1945 edition of The Children's Life of Christ with dust jacket in good condition on eBay. I got it for £11.38 — its initial price was something like £4.99 and I bid a maximum of £15, so that wasn't bad. I read this one some time ago and really enjoyed it — as we know, Enid wasn't a particularly religious person herself, but she had as much of a flair for retelling Bible stories in an engaging way as she did for any other stories with a good message in them, and this book is a really sweet one, especially with Eileen Soper's illustrations as well. I'm delighted to have it with a dust jacket at last!

Well done Courtenay! That was probably one of the first books I bought in a dust wrapper as a collector - probably around 2002 - and even then it cost me £8 so the price you paid was very good.

Today another book I bought from eBay arrived - 'Humpty Dumpty and Belinda'. Its one of the few EB books I've never seen in real life before - only in The Cave etc. Mine isn't a really pristine copy but its clean with just a bit of bumping to edges and corners - and it only cost me £2.50 so I can't complain!

I never realised until now what a thick book it is. I thought it would be just a relatively short story, so I was surprised to see it actually has several chapters.

Another thing I find intriguing is that the photographs were taken by the man who plays 'Daddy' in the story - Hugh Gee, and 'Mummy' is played by his wife Sally Gee, and Jane, who plays Jane, is their real life daughter. Also, Sally Gee did the illustrations that appear in the book. It makes me wonder how this collaboration came about. Did Enid know the Gee family personally? Did they approach Enid with the idea? A very unusual book.

Well done, Courtenay and Rob!