Journal 83

[Daisy]

My journal has arrived today. Thank you Tony for another great edition.

[Jack400]

Mine has, and great it is too. Except for one thing ---apparently that the last two postal increases have lost money due to the postal service price increases. Perhaps someone can provide help in changing the subscription price when renewing on PayPal?- I gather some of you manage to do this - it never seems to give me the option!
At least they seem to arrive. I have sent a card and a letter to Devon and neither have arrived (December and January) respectively.

[pete9012S]

I'm saving mine for Friday/The weekend when I should have a little time away from work - can't wait!

[Anita Bensoussane]

It's good to know that people's Journals are arriving. A nice thought about helping with the extra costs, Jack. I've never tried using it, but there's a 'Donate' button on the 'Subscribe' page if that's of any help.

Like Bertie, I agree with John Pickup's appraisal of The Ragamuffin Mystery. It's a somewhat disappointing book - though I too consider it slightly better than The Rat-a-Tat Mystery. Thank goodness Snubby can be relied upon to liven things up! He's a bundle of energy, curiosity and fun - definitely one of my favourite Enid Blyton characters.

There's a small town/village in Wales called Penrhyndeudraeth which might (subconsciously?) have inspired the name Penrhyndendraith. Funnily enough, Enid Blyton originally called the village Tillyhwllanyll (in the magazine serialisation) but perhaps Welsh readers pointed out that that was an unlikely-sounding name.

I'm sorry John's in-depth look at the Barney mysteries has come to an end as I've thoroughly enjoyed reading his thoughts on this remarkable series.

It's amusing to hear from Angela Canning about the Purnell Sunshine Library error, in which a number of pages from Fairy Stories seem to have found their way into Happy Time Stories! I'd have found it extremely frustrating if any of my childhood Purnell books had been like that!

[Boodi 2]

No sign of my journal yet, but the journey to Germany always takes longer, so no doubt it will arrive in due course. I must check out the 'donate' button on the Suscribe page as I would like to help with the extra postage costs.

[Kate Mary]

I haven’t got my Journal yet and I don’t live in Germany, still there’s always tomorrow, another opportunity to be disappointed.

[Anita Bensoussane]

How annoying that you haven't yet received your Journal, Kate. I'm crossing my fingers and my toes for you for tomorrow. Hope yours arrives soon too, Boodi.

[Courtenay]

Mine arrived yesterday! I've only had a short time to look through it, but there are some excellent-looking articles in there and I'm particularly looking forward to indulging in the latest story from the "Roaring Twenties". Many thanks in advance to all the contributors and to Tony for pulling it all together!

[timv]

Some thoughts on the Journal's latest issue, now I've finished reading it. I don't think we should give up on hopes that either the Mistletoe Farm books or the Barney series will be reprinted, given that both can be presented as being 'inclusive' and there are none of the 'stereotyped villains' or 'implicit racism/ classism' that eager critics can claim to locate in some of the Famous Five and Adventure series books (eg 'gypsies and foreigners' as usually villains and working-class types being 'looked down on'). Anyway. TV has snapped up Malory Towers with a few tweaks - I will be interested to see if they tackle Josephine Jones and her father in the adaptation of Book 6, and if so how - so having a series with some problematic characters can be done, even if by re-writing them or leaving them out.

The Barney series has the homeless 'drifter' Barney and the orphaned Snubby so it should be appealing to modern viewers, and it can add high adventure and danger to life as with the Adventure series (eg the Rubadub book which is a very good spy thriller); I think the main danger is just that it is not that well-known. Ditto Mistletoe Farm with its conservation message, pre-modernisation (ie carbon-neutral?) farm life, putting others above yourself, it's the show-off hermit not the 'down to earth' and law-evading Mr Twigg who's the real crook ,and showing up vain, materialistic, superficial Rose. The quotes in Anita's article about 'real beauty' being in character not superficial appearance, eg with Linnie's view of Dorcas, and Linnie as a 'real' mother not a 'shows off in public but doesn't rally care much' Rose, are all too relevant today - Enid's timeless values vs the world of social media and TV reality show celebrities?

One fan of the books in the right publisher's office might be of great value here. As far as I can work out from my own long involvement with publishing a lot of book-commissioners in offices just don't know the lesser-known, shorter, or non-mainstream books by many authors, not only Enid. They then fall back on 'oh well, I've never heard of it, the readers won't either, it's too much of a risk to republish this'. And if the best books by an author are not in a long series and/or are with a publisher that regularly re-issues books, they stand a higher chance of being 'forgotten'; the best hopes for survival lie if an author gets their entire catalogue (or most of it) put out by one , large publisher not a variety of smaller ones who often end up closing down. Some of Enid's 1930s-50s contemporaries , eg Elsie J Oxenham, had seven or eight publishers and many books only had one 'run' and then vanished.

Vanessa adds some valuable notes of more shrewd and insightful, not just 'bossy', opinions and comments by Julian which show him as more 'rounded'; isn't there a reference at one point to him painting? (Kirrin Island Again?) Ditto Anne's being caring and occasionally shrewd or 'poetic' , as about the scenery and weather. Mistletoe Farm was a book which I rad when I was eight and value highly; it was accidentally a timely choice for my parents to buy for me as we had just moved to a house with a bigger garden and had started growing our own vegetables and one of my new schoolfriends lived on a farm so the farming was an appropriate topic to get absorbed in. The 'give fools their gold' poetic quote is a favourite of mine ; thanks to Anita for tracking it down, I had never heard of John Whittier.

The idea of the independent-minded 'young teen' getting friendly with a local who knows all about the countryside but is capable of breaking the law regularly, and 'Our Hero/ Heroine' refusing to betray them and having a dilemma over whether to go out on an illegal night-time venture with him is very similar to the slightly later scenario in Monica Edwards' 'Summer of the Grat Secret' where vicar's daughter Tamzin goes out on a smuggling trip with 'loveable but crooked' ferryman Jim Decks. Jim also likes winding up the local police, and Tamzin's father is disapproving of his daughter's friendship but not that heavy-handed, like Mr Longfield is of Jack and Mr Twigg. (This was apparently an exaggerated version of teenage Monica's own situation at Rye Harbour vicarage in the late 1920s, when she hung around with the local fishermen.) You can quote the Twigg situation against any critic who claims that Enid always has her children rounding up criminals - as usual, what occurs in the best-known of an author's series is lazily assumed to be the case in all their books!

[Kate Mary]

Anita’s toe and finger crossing must have done the trick because……IT’S ARRIVED!! Haven’t read any of it yet other than Tony’s editorial and renewed my subscription (of course). It looks a cracking read as always and I love the cover picture, The Treasure Hunters is my favourite Enid Blyton book, so I’m particularly looking forward to John Henstock’s article. Lots to read over the Easter weekend.

[Anita Bensoussane]

Hurrah - I'll uncross them now, Kate!

Tim, it would be brilliant to see the Six Cousins duology and Barney series back in print. Tony and I talked to Hachette/Hodder about those books and the Adventurous Four titles, the Secret series and some of the one-off books about a year ago. However, we haven't heard that anything is in the pipeline. Hachette are the Enid Blyton copyright holders as you know (with the exception of the Noddy copyright), but Enid Blyton was so prolific that I imagine there are just too many titles for one publisher to keep in print. Macmillan still publish the Adventure series but I'm not sure that there are any other Blyton publishers now besides Hachette and Macmillan. In the days when companies like Award and Egmont published some of the books as well, more were available. It would be wonderful if some of the neglected titles could be brought back at some stage!

Yes, the messages in Six Cousins at Mistletoe Farm about inner beauty and putting others first seem particularly important in this age of social media, when there is a great deal of focus on image and the self.

There are stereotyped "thieving gypsies" in Six Cousins Again but Enid Blyton has honest, likeable gypsies in other books - particularly Enid Blyton's Animal Lover's Book, in which we meet Zachary Boswell - so the overall picture isn't negative.

I want to comment on more articles but will have to come back another day!

[GloomyGraham]

Enid Blyton was so prolific that I imagine there are just too many titles for one publisher to keep in print.

You would think - these days - that a publisher could allow 'print to order' books for such a prolific author.

I know of many publications in recent times that can't support a large print-run (and/or distribution) but offer those who are interested the chance to order their own copy of books.

[Lucky Star]

I've now finished Journal 83 and what a worthy addition the the series it is. From it's lovely front cover to Tony's tongue in cheek editorial to it's colourful rear cover it was as big a treat to the senses as all of it's siblings.

Six Cousins at Mistletoe Farm has been a favourite of mine since I first discovered it many many years ago and so I was delighted to read Anita's article as it's obvious she loves it just as much as I do. It certainly is a great example of Enid's more mature writing and it is filled with an intriguing array of character studies. It is in a way these characters and their interaction that makes the book so much more fascinating than any of the more standard mystery or adventure tales. I found the analysis of the names particularly fascinating; I had never stopped to think about the significance of the names before. I look forward (hopefully) to the second book being similarly dissected next time.

The Treasure Hunters is a book I only came across as an adult and it doesn't hold the same allure for me as the ones I read in childhood. Nevertheless I can see why people love it and John Henstock's article really brought the feel of the book back to me. I had forgotten that there was a Mr. Potts in this book as well as in Six Cousins. A rather different character though. And John was absolutely right when he said that "Enid really knows how to rack up the tension".

What a muddle Angela Canning described. I have a copy of Happy Time Stories on my shelf and had to get up and pull it down as a comparison. While mine has the same cover and is also a 1970 edition sadly mine is boringly normal in that all stories seem to be there as advertised, present and correct. And I did have to laugh out loud at Angela's final two lines.

Five Have Plenty of Character by Vanessa Tobin was a teasing look at what might be in her book. I will certainly check it out on Amazon. And Sharon Bennett's lovely article on her life time experiences of Blyton had me nodding along as so many of them mirrored my own. Two very enjoyable articles.

John Pickup finished his Barney series dissection with The Ragamuffin Mystery. I think John, like Enid, had initially planned only to cover the first four far superior books but, also like Enid, he was persuaded by popular demand to carry on and review the last two. Many thanks to him for that as I have enjoyed his last two reviews very much indeed. I agreed with everything John said about the book and particularly his assessment that it is Snubby rather than Barney who is the real hero in this one. And yes, how sad it is that today's children do not have the opportunity to buy and read these wonderful books. I'm sad to see the end of this series of articles and hopefully John will turn his attention to another series in the near future.

As a child I loved Kiki. As an adult I'm slightly more ambivalent towards her, finding her a little annoying at time. Nonetheless I thoroughly enjoyed Judith Crabb's article on her and some of the other parrot characters in children's literature. Rather surprising really how many books have featured parrots! The American Three Investigator series also built a whole book around a troupe of them (The Mystery of the Stuttering Parrot).

Tim Venning's articles are always reliably interesting and this one was no exception with it's carefully researched insights into the real life locations used in filming. Every time I read one of Tim's articles I start planning trips to the region. Sadly I've yet to get beyond the planning stage but someday......

83 signed off with Neville Barlow's fascinating look at Eileen Soper. One of my favourite illustrators.

Together with a wonderful story by Enid herself this all added up to a very enjoyable couple of reading sessions. Thanks as always go to all the contributors and of course to Tony for bringing the whole thing together in the usual fantastic fashion. Never was money better spent than on the annual resubscription to this wonderful publication.

[Hannah]

I somehow missed this thread so it was a big (but nice!) surprise to find the journal when I came home.
It's the perfect time - tomorrow and Monday are holidays in Germany and my university has a week off after Easter this year too. So I should find time to read it within the next few days.

[Anita Bensoussane]

Enid Blyton was so prolific that I imagine there are just too many titles for one publisher to keep in print.

You would think - these days - that a publisher could allow 'print to order' books for such a prolific author.

I know of many publications in recent times that can't support a large print-run (and/or distribution) but offer those who are interested the chance to order their own copy of books.

'Print to order' titles tend to be more expensive, which wouldn't be good when dealing with books aimed at children. Children wouldn't be able to have their own online accounts anyway. Besides, many young readers probably like to see and handle books before parting with their pocket money or book tokens - and prefer to have their chosen title immediately rather than waiting for it to come through the post. I still remember the excitement of choosing a new book as a youngster, especially after a birthday or Christmas when I had book tokens from relatives and could buy several titles in one go.

Six Cousins at Mistletoe Farm has been a favourite of mine since I first discovered it many many years ago and so I was delighted to read Anita's article as it's obvious she loves it just as much as I do. It certainly is a great example of Enid's more mature writing and it is filled with an intriguing array of character studies. It is in a way these characters and their interaction that makes the book so much more fascinating than any of the more standard mystery or adventure tales. I found the analysis of the names particularly fascinating; I had never stopped to think about the significance of the names before. I look forward (hopefully) to the second book being similarly dissected next time.

Thanks, John. I'm planning to write about Six Cousins Again for the next Journal. Even as a child I was struck by the apt surnames of some of the countryside characters - Longfield, Lane and Twigg.