Notable series include: The Famous Five, The Secret Seven, The Five Find-Outers, Noddy, The Wishing Chair, Mallory Towers, and St. Her stories were often either children's adventure and mystery stories, or fantasies involving magic. She died in 1968, one year after her second husband.īlyton was a prolific author of children's books, who penned an estimated 800 books over about 40 years. This marriage ended in divorce, and Blyton remarried in 1943, to surgeon Kenneth Fraser Darrell Waters. She taught for five years before her 1924 marriage to editor Hugh Pollock, with whom she had two daughters.
Christopher's School, Beckenham, and - having decided not to pursue her music - at Ipswich High School, where she trained as a kindergarten teacher. 1939 might as well be 2016: I still want to give Moon-Face a hug, eat pop-cakes with Silky and clamber up the Ladder into The Land of Dreams- all while wearing knee pads, a helmet and sensible shoes, of course.Enid Mary Blyton (1897 - 1968) was an English author of children's books.īorn in South London, Blyton was the eldest of three children, and showed an early interest in music and reading. There’s a certain irony to it- a series of books where the freedom of children is tantamount, yet we have changed their names to prevent schoolyard giggling- how short-sighted we are!Īs an adult, books become longer, the language changes, the words are darker, the themes more complex. I feel sad that Enid Blyton’s characters were changed, made more politically correct, all negative background meanings removed, made safer. Dick and Fanny, due to their negative late 20 th century connotations, have been changed to Rick and Frannie. Instead of corporal punishment, she now simply shouts at the fairies and pixies in her school. In later editions, I’ve learned, Dame Slap became Dame Snap. They are a dedication to the dreamy soul in every child, every land a world for small citizens to explore, unabashed and unchecked. The books are written with a total absence of adult cynicism, which is perhaps what makes them so timeless. I’m a big crybaby, so my eyes welled up when the children climbed to the Land of Magic Medicines to get medicine for their mother. How sweet the characters are to each other, how evident their love and selflessness, their bravery and conviction. Nostalgia hits me hard in the chest while I re-read some of my favourite lands.
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