79 Facts About Enid Blyton

Enid Mary Blyton was an English children's writer, whose books have been worldwide bestsellers since the 1930s, selling more than 600 million copies.

Enid Blyton's books are still enormously popular and have been translated into ninety languages.

Enid Blyton wrote on a wide range of topics, including education, natural history, fantasy, mystery, and biblical narratives.

Enid Blyton is best remembered today for her Noddy, Famous Five, Secret Seven, the Five Find-Outers, and Malory Towers books, although she wrote many others including the St Clare's, The Naughtiest Girl and The Faraway Tree series.

Enid Blyton's writing was unplanned and sprang largely from her unconscious mind: she typed her stories as events unfolded before her.

The sheer volume of her work and the speed with which she produced it led to rumours that Enid Blyton employed an army of ghost writers, a charge she vigorously denied.

Enid Blyton's work became increasingly controversial among literary critics, teachers, and parents beginning in the 1950s, due to the alleged unchallenging nature of her writing and her themes, particularly in the Noddy series.

Enid Blyton felt she had a responsibility to provide her readers with a strong moral framework, so she encouraged them to support worthy causes.

Enid Blyton's younger brothers, Hanly and Carey, were born after the family had moved to a semi-detached house in Beckenham, then a village in Kent.

Thomas Blyton ignited Enid's interest in nature; in her autobiography she wrote that he "loved flowers and birds and wild animals, and knew more about them than anyone I had ever met".

Enid Blyton passed on his interest in gardening, art, music, literature, and theatre, and the pair often went on nature walks, much to the disapproval of Enid's mother, who showed little interest in her daughter's pursuits.

Enid Blyton was devastated when her father left the family shortly after her 13th birthday to live with another woman.

From 1907 to 1915, Enid Blyton attended St Christopher's School in Beckenham, where she enjoyed physical activities and became school tennis champion and lacrosse captain.

Enid Blyton was not keen on all the academic subjects, but excelled in writing and, in 1911, entered Arthur Mee's children's poetry competition.

Enid Blyton's mother considered her efforts at writing to be a "waste of time and money", but she was encouraged to persevere by Mabel Attenborough, the aunt of school friend Mary Potter.

Enid Blyton's father taught her to play the piano, which she mastered well enough for him to believe she might follow in his sister's footsteps and become a professional musician.

Enid Blyton considered enrolling at the Guildhall School of Music, but decided she was better suited to becoming a writer.

At Woodbridge Congregational Church, Enid Blyton met Ida Hunt, who taught at Ipswich High School and suggested she train there as a teacher.

Enid Blyton was introduced to the children at the nursery school and, recognising her natural affinity with them, enrolled in a National Froebel Union teacher training course at the school in September 1916.

Enid Blyton completed her teacher training course in December 1918 and, the following month, obtained a teaching appointment at Bickley Park School, a small, independent establishment for boys in Bickley, Kent.

Two months later, Enid Blyton received a teaching certificate with distinctions in zoology and principles of education; first class in botany, geography, practice and history of education, child hygiene, and classroom teaching; and second class in literature and elementary mathematics.

In 1920, she moved to Southernhay, in Hook Road Surbiton, as nursery governess to the four sons of architect Horace Thompson and his wife Gertrude, with whom Enid Blyton spent four happy years.

In 1920, Enid Blyton moved to Chessington and began writing in her spare time.

Also in that year, Enid Blyton began writing in annuals for Cassell and George Newnes, and her first piece of writing, "Peronel and his Pot of Glue", was accepted for publication in Teachers' World.

In July 1923, Enid Blyton published Real Fairies, a collection of thirty-three poems written especially for the book with the exception of "Pretending", which had appeared earlier in Punch magazine.

In Tales of Ancient Greece Enid Blyton retold 16 well-known ancient Greek myths, but used the Latin rather than the Greek names of deities and invented conversations between characters.

Later in 1940 Enid Blyton published the first of her boarding school story books and the first novel in the Naughtiest Girl series, The Naughtiest Girl in the School, which followed the exploits of the mischievous schoolgirl Elizabeth Allen at the fictional Whyteleafe School.

In 1942 Enid Blyton released the first book in the Mary Mouse series, Mary Mouse and the Dolls' House, about a mouse exiled from her mousehole who becomes a maid at a dolls' house.

Enid Blyton based the character of Georgina, a tomboy she described as "short-haired, freckled, sturdy, and snub-nosed" and "bold and daring, hot-tempered and loyal", on herself.

Enid Blyton had an interest in biblical narratives, and retold Old and New Testament stories.

Capitalising on her success, with a loyal and ever-growing readership, Enid Blyton produced a new edition of many of her series such as the Famous Five, the Five Find-Outers and St Clare's every year in addition to many other novels, short stories and books.

In 1946 Enid Blyton launched the first in the Malory Towers series of six books based around the schoolgirl Darrell Rivers, First Term at Malory Towers, which became extremely popular, particularly with girls.

Enid Blyton rewrote the stories so they could be adapted into cartoons, which appeared in Mickey Mouse Weekly in 1951 with illustrations by George Brook.

Four days after the meeting Enid Blyton sent the text of the first two Noddy books to her publisher, to be forwarded to van der Beek.

In 1950 Enid Blyton established the company Darrell Waters Ltd to manage her affairs.

Enid Blyton completed the sixth and final book of the Malory Towers series, Last Term at Malory Towers, in 1951.

Enid Blyton published several further books featuring the character of Scamp the terrier, following on from The Adventures of Scamp, a novel she had released in 1943 under the pseudonym of Mary Pollock.

Enid Blyton introduced the character of Bom, a stylish toy drummer dressed in a bright red coat and helmet, alongside Noddy in TV Comic in July 1956.

Many of Enid Blyton's series, including Noddy and The Famous Five, continued to be successful in the 1960s; by 1962,26 million copies of Noddy had been sold.

Enid Blyton concluded several of her long-running series in 1963, publishing the last books of The Famous Five and The Secret Seven ; she produced three more Brer Rabbit books with the illustrator Grace Lodge: Brer Rabbit Again, Brer Rabbit Book, and Brer Rabbit's a Rascal.

Enid Blyton's declining health and a falling off in readership among older children have been put forward as the principal reasons for this change in trend.

Enid Blyton published her last book in the Noddy series, Noddy and the Aeroplane, in February 1964.

Enid Blyton cemented her reputation as a children's writer when in 1926 she took over the editing of Sunny Stories, a magazine that typically included the re-telling of legends, myths, stories and other articles for children.

Blyton stopped contributing in 1952, and it closed down the following year, shortly before the appearance of the new fortnightly Enid Blyton Magazine written entirely by Blyton.

Enid Blyton worked in a wide range of fictional genres, from fairy tales to animal, nature, detective, mystery, and circus stories, but she often "blurred the boundaries" in her books, and encompassed a range of genres even in her short stories.

Enid Blyton was unwilling to conduct any research or planning before beginning work on a new book, which coupled with the lack of variety in her life according to Druce almost inevitably presented the danger that she might unconsciously, and clearly did, plagiarise the books she had read, including her own.

Enid Blyton had "thought it was made up of every experience she'd ever had, everything she's seen or heard or read, much of which had long disappeared from her conscious memory" but never knew the direction her stories would take.

Enid Blyton usually began writing soon after breakfast, with her portable typewriter on her knee and her favourite red Moroccan shawl nearby; she believed that the colour red acted as a "mental stimulus" for her.

Enid Blyton herself wrote that "my love of children is the whole foundation of all my work".

Victor Watson, Assistant Director of Research at Homerton College, Cambridge, believes that Enid Blyton's works reveal an "essential longing and potential associated with childhood", and notes how the opening pages of The Mountain of Adventure present a "deeply appealing ideal of childhood".

Watson further notes how Enid Blyton often used minimalist visual descriptions and introduced a few careless phrases such as "gleamed enchantingly" to appeal to her young readers.

Enid Blyton published an appeal in her magazine asking children to let her know if they heard such stories and, after one mother informed her that she had attended a parents' meeting at her daughter's school during which a young librarian had repeated the allegation, Blyton decided in 1955 to begin legal proceedings.

The librarian was eventually forced to make a public apology in open court early the following year, but the rumours that Enid Blyton operated "a 'company' of ghost writers" persisted, as some found it difficult to believe that one woman working alone could produce such a volume of work.

Enid Blyton felt a responsibility to provide her readers with a positive moral framework, and she encouraged them to support worthy causes.

Enid Blyton's view, expressed in a 1957 article, was that children should help animals and other children rather than adults:.

The largest of the clubs she was involved with was the Busy Bees, the junior section of the People's Dispensary for Sick Animals, which Enid Blyton had actively supported since 1933.

Enid Blyton agreed, on condition that it serve a useful purpose, and suggested that it could raise funds for the Shaftesbury Society Babies' Home in Beaconsfield, on whose committee she had served since 1948.

Enid Blyton capitalised upon her commercial success as an author by negotiating agreements with jigsaw puzzle and games manufacturers from the late 1940s onwards; by the early 1960s some 146 different companies were involved in merchandising Noddy alone.

On 28 August 1924, Enid Blyton married Major Hugh Alexander Pollock, DSO at Bromley Register Office, without inviting her family.

Enid Blyton's first daughter, Gillian, was born on 15 July 1931, and, after a miscarriage in 1934, she gave birth to a second daughter, Imogen, on 27 October 1935.

In 1938, she and her family moved to a house in Beaconsfield, named Green Hedges by Enid Blyton's readers, following a competition in her magazine.

Enid Blyton made her an offer to join him as secretary in his posting to a Home Guard training center at Denbies, a Gothic mansion in Surrey belonging to Lord Ashcombe, and they began a romantic relationship.

In 1941, Enid Blyton met Kenneth Fraser Darrell Waters, a London surgeon with whom she began a serious affair.

Enid Blyton changed the surname of her daughters to Darrell Waters and publicly embraced her new role as a happily married and devoted doctor's wife.

Enid Blyton's love of tennis included playing naked, with nude tennis "a common practice in those days among the more louche members of the middle classes".

Enid Blyton's health began to deteriorate in 1957, when, during a round of golf, she started to feel faint and breathless, and, by 1960, she was displaying signs of dementia.

Enid Blyton died in her sleep of Alzheimer's disease at the Greenways Nursing Home, Hampstead, North London, on 28 November 1968, aged 71.

Since her death and the publication of her daughter Imogen's 1989 autobiography, A Childhood at Green Hedges, Enid Blyton has emerged as an emotionally immature, unstable and often malicious figure.

The first Enid Blyton Day was held at Rickmansworth on 6 March 1993 and, in October 1996, the Enid Blyton award, The Enid, was given to those who have made outstanding contributions towards children.

Enid Blyton is the world's fourth most-translated author, behind Agatha Christie, Jules Verne and William Shakespeare with her books being translated into 90 languages.

From 2000 to 2010, Enid Blyton was listed as a Top Ten author, selling almost 8 million copies in the UK alone.

Enid Blyton's books continue to be very popular among children in Commonwealth nations such as India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Singapore, Malta, New Zealand and Australia, and around the world.

Novelists influenced by Enid Blyton include the crime writer Denise Danks, whose fictional detective Georgina Powers is based on George from the Famous Five.

Some librarians felt that Enid Blyton's restricted use of language, a conscious product of her teaching background, was prejudicial to an appreciation of more literary qualities.

The author and educational psychologist Nicholas Tucker notes that it was common to see Enid Blyton cited as people's favourite or least favourite author according to their age, and argues that her books create an "encapsulated world for young readers that simply dissolves with age, leaving behind only memories of excitement and strong identification".

Accusations of racism in Enid Blyton's books were first made by Lena Jeger in a Guardian article published in 1966.

In 1954 Enid Blyton adapted Noddy for the stage, producing the Noddy in Toyland pantomime in just two or three weeks.

Enid Blyton was delighted with its reception by children in the audience, and attended the theatre three or four times a week.

The Seven Stories collection contains a significant number of Enid Blyton's typescripts, including the previously unpublished novel, Mr Tumpy's Caravan, as well as personal papers and diaries.