Secret Lives: Enid Blyton

(August 11, 1897–November 28, 1968)

Beyond the Famous Five

AUGUST 11, 1997. That’s when the world celebrated the birth centenary of one of its most popular children’s writers. An author whose 600-plus books have been translated into 40 languages, including Mandarin. Her name? Enid Blyton!

If you’ve shared high jinks with the twins at St. Clare’s, laughed at Mam’zelle’s accent at Malory Towers, or joined the excitement on the Famous Five’s Island of Adventure, I imagine there’s a question that’s teasing you. What was Blyton like, off the printed page?

First, let’s share a few secrets. Did you know she also wrote under another name? As Mary Pollock. She’d probably come in fourth among all-time best-selling children’s writers ~ behind J.K. Rowling, Roald Dahl and the Asterix books. And though Blyton passed away in 1968, her books had sold over eight million copies by 1995.

As a child, Blyton learnt to read very early. She loved the humour of Alice in Wonderland, the thrill-packed Coral Island. She enjoyed Black Beauty and Little Women because she could identify with the ‘real children’ on their pages. Was there a book she disliked? Yes, Grimm’s Fairy Tales, which she found cruel and frightening. Do you agree?

At St. Christopher’s School for Girls in England, Blyton ~ who became both the head girl and captain of games ~ left a mark because of the practical jokes she constantly played. She’d plague her teachers and classmates with rubber-and-tin tipped pencils, artificial blots and similar tricks. Her friends admired Enid for her daring. She was the first to have her long plait cut off, to wear her hair shoulder-length.

Enid entered a children’s poetry context at 14 or 15, conducted by Arthur Mee (who compiled the famous Book of Knowledge series). Imagine her glee when Mee wrote to say he would print her verses.

Originally a trained teacher, Blyton told hundreds of stories to her little students. Her stories first appeared the Teacher’s World magazine, until her first novel was published in 1938. Imagine this ~ during the 1940s, she wrote over 30 books a year!

Blyton’s older daughter, Gillian Beaverstock, once said her mother’s vivid imagination was “rather like seeing the whole story on a TV set which was in her mind.” Blyton wrote very quickly, sitting in her garden all summer with her typewriter, while her two cats romped around. For instance, she began The Island of Adventure on a Monday ~ and it was done by Friday! And her mother allowed Gillian to read the adventures of the Famous Five right away.

Where did Blyton’s characters come from? George of the Famous Five was based on a real tomboy named Georgina, while Fatty was sparked by a “plump, ingenious, very amusing boy I once knew,” she recalled.

Did she plot her stories in detail? “Sometimes, when I have finished writing for the day, I think, ‘Good gracious! Poor characters, I simply do not know how they will get out of this situation.’ But the next day ~ hey presto! ~ they resolve their fix in some miraculous way of their own,” she explained in The Big Enid Blyton Book, published in 1961.

Blyton set up four children’s clubs. Her Famous Five Club raised funds for the little Children’s Home in Beaconsfield, which cared for deserted children, while the Busy Bees assisted animal dispensaries. Their members raised funds by washing dishes, doing the shopping, staging junior shows or selling old goods.

Her popularity got Blyton into trouble. During the 1950s and 1960s, British librarians and teacher banned her books because they thought the golliwog in the Noddy stories stood for blacks! As a result, the golliwogs were replaced by goblins in the revised Noddy books of the 1980s.

But no matter how alien the cucumber sandwiches and small-town adventures of her characters appear, Blyton remains one of your favourites, right? I think I spotted a Noddy-style nod in response.