The Enid Blyton Society

Very interesting indeed. Well-spotted, Shadow!

Well theres just 7 hours left for these letters and nobody has bid yet. Maybe it was a bit of an optimistic starting price.

Sadly I failed to win the letters despite putting in a ridiculously high bid, so there won't be a follow up article about Enid Boyten in the next Journal! Perhaps it has been bought by someone who looks at these forums, but more likely by a private collector who will stash it away and we will never see it again!!

Sorry to hear that - what a blow! Let's hope the buyer is someone who frequents these forums and will be happy to allow the letters to be used in the Journal.

What a pity Tony, you couldn't get these letters for the Society archives, they should be published. I hope they will surface again soon.

Kate

Thats a pity. Its the worst thing about private collectors. No matter what it is they collect they inevitably remove things from public view which really should be out in the open.

  Another fine Journal. I still have to read the one Naughtiest Girl book and it will be a good time to try and get it to go along with the articles. Likewise, I haven’t read the Mary Pollock books and so it’s nice to read about them.
  I also enjoyed reading Fred Clampitt’s article in which he recalled distant memories. It's always nice to read a first hand account.
I would never regard "Tally Ho Cottage, The Mystery of" as boring, but interesting to read the article on it.

The letter-writer’s point about the covers being good is a pertinent one as I usually can’t wait to get stuck into the articles and perhaps don’t pay a lot of attention to the excellent covers.

Those who read the article by Fred Clampitt might be interested to see his letters etc. in the auction catalogue for May 19th at Hall's in Shrewsbury.

I can update this before I post it as Fred Clampitt has just phoned me and he has withdrawn the last three lots to go into a future auction as the pricing of 60 books, many of which were 1st editions, seems to be a bit on the low side!

Interesting stuff!

Just finished reading Enid Blyton's letters to Hilda Rice and I notice that she refers to 'show' as 'shew' - when did 'shew' fall out of favour? I never saw that particular spelling in any of my Blytons.

I don't know exactly when "shew" fell out of favour, but it does seem archaic.

It was certainly in use in the late 50s/early 60s. I remember a sign at the railway station, stating that "All tickets must be shewn". There was also a sign on buses proclaiming "Spitting Prohibited"!