The Enid Blyton Society

Does anyway know what the 1st and very last book was that Enid wrote,would like to collect them.

Regards

Her first official book was the book of poems, 'Child Whispers' - which usually sells for around £2,000 or so.

Her last-ever novel was 'The Hidey Hole' in 1964. Still fairly easy to find in a dust jacket for around £12.

However, there were other times she was in print before Child Whispers, and many short stories and shorter non-novel-sized books (such as 'The Man Who Stopped to help' - based on the bible story 'The Good Samaritan') which were published after The Hidey Hole, so it depends what you mean by 'first and last'!

Some good information from Rob. If you are not considering poetry and interested in her more her novel/story type books:

EARLY WORK AND FIRST NOVEL

Enid Blyton worked on a number of educational books in the 1920s-30s, among other things, and in 1926 she began writing and editing a fortnightly magazine, Sunny Stories for Little Folks. It became a weekly publication in 1937 and changed its name to Enid Blyton's Sunny Stories, finally becoming Sunny Stories. What could be said to be Enid Blyton's first full-length novel, The Enid Blyton Book of Bunnies, was published in 1925 (it was later re-titled The Adventures of Binkle and Flip.) However, that book is episodic in nature, reading more like a collection of individual stories about two mischievous rabbits, and The Enid Blyton Book of Brownies, published in 1926, is perhaps more deserving of the title "first novel."

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http://www.enidblytonsociety.co.uk/book ... 26+Jump%29" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Ta folks,is a copy of Child Whispers on e-bay just now for £2163,bit much for me unfortunately

Sadly, that's out of my price range!

I agree! I've never paid more than £60 for an Enid Blyton book, and that was unusually expensive for me!

I agree. £2163 is definitely beyond the price range that I can afford.

I suspect that people who pay over £2000 for a book aren't really interested in the content, they just want to collect valuable books by esteemed authors and put them into a glass case, never to be read again. I think I speak for all of us on here in that we read the books we collect because we like the poems, stories, etc.

I just received through the post a hardback set of the Famous Fives on Saturday,my 3rd complete set and have read the 1st 2 already,even though I have read them all dozens of times over the last 40 years.

John Pickup wrote:I suspect that people who pay over £2000 for a book aren't really interested in the content, they just want to collect valuable books by esteemed authors and put them into a glass case, never to be read again. I think I speak for all of us on here in that we read the books we collect because we like the poems, stories, etc.

Some of my best-loved Blyton's are those that cost me less than a couple of pounds.

Mine too, Nigel

By far my best-loved Blyton is the second edition Rilloby Fair Mystery with a dust wrapper that I bought at a school jumble sale in 1980 for 10p!

Rob Houghton wrote:Her first official book was the book of poems, 'Child Whispers' - which usually sells for around £2,000 or so.

Is that with or without a dust wrapper? I paid £40 for my copy, granted it's got no wrapper, but still, that's a bit of a price difference!!

I was thinking of the first edition - which had card covers -



But even so, I think £40 for any edition of this book is still pretty cheap!

I notice that there are three editions of Child Whispers listed in the Cave. The first was published in 1922, but no dates are given for the other two editions. Can anyone provide this information? Tony perhaps?

How difficult is it to find the two later editions?