The Enid Blyton Society

I didn’t realise what a lot of work it was. If there’s no space in the journal, there might well be a place for it on the site somewhere, perhaps in the book section. But that would still be a lot of work – in that case maybe a volunteer is needed to help to transcribe it into electronic format for uploading?

I agree it’s about time we had another article on Malory Towers. Here goes:

The difference in thickness between my 1948 edition of Third Year at Malory Towers and the 1958 edition is 8mm. The measurements are 11mm and 19mm respectively, so first editions are not always thicker. (In fact the dragon paperback is 1mm thicker than the 1948 edition).
The cloth-boards (or covers as I call them) are more flimsy on the older book but only slightly thinner, so the difference is mostly down to the thinner paper used in war time (and post war years). There are about 85 pages, so it follows that the pages are 0.09mm thicker on the later version.
The 1948 edition states: “This book is produced in complete conformity with the authorized economy standards”.
Malory only has one L in all cases, so no ink was ever wasted, though presumably they could have afforded another L by 1958.

[Lenoir:] Malory only has one L in all cases, so no ink was ever wasted, though presumably they could have afforded another L by 1958.

Perhaps there is a place for Gordon Lupson's article somewhere on the website, as Lenoir suggested. But it would still involve an enormous amount of work for something which isn't likely to be of interest to most.

Anita

Surely, the answer to this is to place a small advert in the next Journal, similar to this:

Gordon Lupson's Final Articles

If YOU would like to read the final two chapters of this enthralling
series on minor discrepancies and alterations in Blyton book covers
and end papers, just send £2 to the Editor for a genuine copy of
the conclusion to this series, written in Gordon's own hand.

Following this course, people who want to finish the series will be happy, those of us wishing to stay awake will be too. As I guess their won't be too many takers, Tony will be able to run off a couple of copies of Gordon's manuscript in not too long a time.

I cannot really comment on Gordon Lupson's articles, I have never actually read them, I only subscribed to the Journal from issue 33. Surely the best solution is to make the final two parts available via the website, as already suggested by Lenoir.

Lenoir wrote:If there’s no space in the journal, there might well be a place for it on the site somewhere, perhaps in the book section. But that would still be a lot of work – in that case maybe a volunteer is needed to help to transcribe it into electronic format for uploading?

Optical character recognition software (O.C.R) would make short work of any typed manuscript in a matter of seconds.

Petermax wrote:Optical character recognition software (O.C.R) would make short work of any typed manuscript in a matter of seconds.

One of the problems is that the remainder of Gordon's article consists of 40 handwritten pages of text, tables and diagrams.

Anita

Petermax wrote:Optical character recognition software (O.C.R) would make short work of any typed manuscript in a matter of seconds.

Anita Bensoussane wrote:One of the problems is that the remainder of Gordon's article consists of 40 handwritten pages of text, tables and diagrams.

Yes, OCR is capable of reading handwriting, but since it's not foolproof even with type, I'd hate to think how much proof-reading it would need with handwriting!

But getting the text into electronic form is a minor hurdle compared with setting all the tables and things. Many, many, MANY hours of work! And for what? For a relatively few possibly interested people? No, I'm putting my foot down here: Gordon's 6-part series (or even the last two parts) is NOT going to webalized and displayed on this site! Not unless Tony begs me, which I know he won't.

I think Nigel has the right idea. I'm sure Tony would be happy to photocopy all the pages and post them if anyone's interested.

If I'm forced to format Gordon's article for this site, then I'll retaliate by dedicating 20 separate new pages to the ins and outs of writing HTML and PHP code, with the phrase "Blyton, Blyton, Blyton!" dotted about to make it relevant.

Keith Robinson wrote: I'm sure Tony would be happy to photocopy all the pages and post them if anyone's interested.

40 pages!

You are absolutely right, Keith - I wouldn't dream of asking you to do them for the website!

A case of Gordonorrhoea ? What'll Google make of that?

Oh dear, poor Gordon. I am glad that Tony said he does'nt have a computer. he'd probably shoot himself if he read what everyone thinks of his precious articles. It does genuinely seem as though the majority of people do not want to read the remaining two parts so I guess thats that. What a relief.

OK, late response, but I enjoyed them. I like statistics and trivia.

I didn't actually retain much info, and hadn't noticed they weren't there in the more recent issues, but I did read it in detail and would read 5 and 6 if they appeared.

Moonraker wrote:A case of Gordonorrhoea ? What'll Google make of that?

Now Google hasn't picked that up yet.

Ming wrote:

Moonraker wrote:A case of Gordonorrhoea ? What'll Google make of that?

Now Google hasn't picked that up yet.

They have now!