The Enid Blyton Society

For a long time my inexperienced mind thought that anything printed with 'Enid Blyton' was put together by Blyton herself .I mean the various assorted story books by different publishers like Dean , Parragon , Dragon etc .
Later on I came to know that the short stories were published in old magazines and only complied together under a title when reprinted .
I know there was a vintage 'Book of Naughty children' by Dragon and illustrated by Eileen Soper.I was excited to come across a hardcover book by Dean and bought it blindly only thinking I have a hardbound version of the Dragon book only to find that it had lesser stories than the a Dragon book and most were different and there were no illustrations.So Dragon and Dean both had put together 'A' books of naughty children .it was never 'The book of naughty children' compiled by Enid Blyton..
I know that there is an Armada book 'Happy Day stories ' and Dean has 'Happy Days stories ' yet with some stories the same.
So how does one know which assorted books were specifically arranged by EB and which were not.
If one has to collect the maximum number of stories written by Blyton , which series would I need to collect -Dean , Parragon , Award , Red fox ? All of them ?
What is the way out of this confusion?

I don't think there's any certain way! For example, Enid published 'Round the Clock Stories' - which was later republished by Dean. It is the same book, but many of the stories in the original have been replaced by other stories in the Dean version. Some have been take out altogether, while others have been replaced and a good proportion are still the same. This is pretty much the same with ll compilations.

For example, some Dragon books purport to be reprints of 'The Blue Story Book' 'Yellow Story Book' etc, but often have only half the stories the original had. Then there are new Dean books that were compiled after Enid died, containing stories that were in some of her other compilations, and sometimes new stories that had never been collected together before!

Its a real minefield!

Luckily, we can do lots of research pre-purchase in the cave thanks to Tony's hard work!

aminmec wrote: If one has to collect the maximum number of stories written by Blyton , which series would I need to collect -Dean , Parragon , Award , Red fox ? All of them ?
What is the way out of this confusion?

If you want to collect the maximum number of stories written by Blyton, you could buy all 72 books published by Award. You can buy them at Navrang. On average, each book has 15 stories. Some have more stories. In total, there are more than 1000 individual short stories(closer to 1100) in those 72 books. The books are very easy to get and they are cheaply priced.

I used to have the same exact question regarding to confusion. I have been cataloguing all my EB short stories collection using spreadsheet(Excel) in order for me to see clearer and bigger picture of it. I use several columns and copy paste each individual stories in each book collection. Sort like a trail to find the origin of each short story.

The Cave has been the biggest help in my project. Without The Cave, it would have been difficult for me. Thank you so much, Tony.

And thanks to Award for publishing those 72 books.

But I think there must be many more stories that were never published (those in EB's MAgazine etc) and also some collections, like 'The Red Spotted Handkerchief' 'We Want a Story' etc that I'm not sure were ever published elsewhere?

At a rough guess I would say that Enid wrote between 5 and 6 thousand short stories. Well over 1000 of these have only appeared in periodicals and have never been collected in books. At the end of last year I compiled an index of uncollected short stories from just four main sources and there were just under a thousand stories on it. If you added in minor sources the number would easily go to somewhere between 1200 to 1500 - for example the Sunday Graphic contained 137 uncollected Pip stories.

I forgot to write, "for the start", Rob. For the start, Aminmec can collect 72 Award books because they are cheap and he can buy them easily. These 72 books in Award series were my very first short stories collections that I bought. They have sparked my interest in collecting all her collected short stories, if possible. As far as I know, Award series is the best starter to collect EB short stories because they are cheap and easy to get. Aminmec can decide whether he wants to continue collecting EB short stories in other series after reading 1100 short stories.

Thank you, Tony. It would be great if you can compile the list of the uncollected short stories and put them in The Cave for reference. I would love to know those four main sources. The three sources of uncollected short stories that I know are Sunny Stories for Little Folks, Enid Blyton's Sunny Stories and Enid Blyton's Magazine. I started my own project of compiling the list of uncollected short stories by obtaining the information from these three sources in The Cave but I abandoned it halfway. This thread has reignited my interest in finishing the list.

Thanks ye all for your inputs.
I always thought the Dean editions were an extensive collection.They were always more easily available and popular and being published in same series as Naughtiest girl , circus series , Faraway tree etc was an advantage to those titles.
I havent bought any Award short story books.If I know correct there were some covers brightly painted with cartoons and varied fonts while some were pale yellow with a similar font .
Which ones do you refer to as the 72 books?
Also these were in the 2000 era so I assume they would be edited for correctness .

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

http://www.navrang.com/?Page=Product&ID=3067" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/offer-listi ... d&qid=&sr=" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Dean series

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

You can see for yourself and compare which series has the most short stories.

Thanks for the information

Surely all the stories in Awards books are in older books as well so that its possibly to get original unaltered/updated versions of those stories?

I find collecting the short stories hard compared with the novels or character books because not only is there a lot of them, the same story is in more than one book and series. I have catalogued them into sections 'holiday books', 'flower series', 'o'clock series' and take out any modern copies to try and make it simpler but I still get mixed up .

I just don't collect the short stories, full stop! Unless, of course, there's something special about a particular book. For example, when I was visiting my parents in Australia a few months ago, I found Dad's old copy of Twenty-Minute Tales that he won as a school prize in the mid 1950s, and he was happy to give it to me (though I left it there at our family home for safekeeping). It's not a first edition and doesn't have a dust jacket, but it does have an "Awarded to..." plate with my dad's name on it, which of course makes it far more valuable to me than anything else could. But although I really enjoyed reading the stories while I was there (it's a particularly good collection, that one!), I don't feel the need to collect the other three "Minute" books. Mind you, we're all different, which is how it should be.

(Which reminds me, too — Dad told me that when he was given that book (I think he was 9 or 10 years old — don't have it with me to check the date), he timed himself reading several of the stories and found they were shorter than 20 minutes, so it was false advertising. Sounds like something I would have done at that age... )

Did they start to shorten stories so soon?