Eileen Soper or Betty Maxey?

[Zar Quon]

Zar, a million thanks for backing up my observation.
Stephen I.

I think you may have missed the sarcasm ol' boy

That sort of kit was used for industrial design purposes, I seriously doubt it was ever put to the use you're suggesting.

[Enikyoga]

Zar, a million thanks for backing up my observation.
Stephen I.

I think you may have missed the sarcasm ol' boy

That sort of kit was used for industrial design purposes, I seriously doubt it was ever put to the use you're suggesting.

I still strongly think that Betty Maxey's illustrations were not hand-sketched but were assisted with a kind of machine or something of that nature, which explains why those illustrations were/are more uniform in their appearance than those of Eileen Soper.
Stephen I.

[Fiona1986]

I'm probably wasting my time, but do you have any evidence she used a machine? Other than thinking that her pictures are more uniform than someone else's? Artists do have different skills and priorities.

[Enikyoga]

It is self-evident that those pictures were machine-produced. It reminds during the pre-Internet era when I used to post ads for some companies at my former alma mater, I used to make cursory glances in the engineering department and seeing students using some sort of draft pencils and pens mapping whatever designs they were working. I strongly believe that, that may have been one of the methodologies Betty Maxey may have used in designing her illustration sketches. I am not sure what machine she exactly use, but I am darned sure she used a machine that produced/reproduced the type of consistent sketches of the kids and Timmy the dog as well as other charcters in the illustrations.
Stephen I.

[Fiona1986]

How can something be "self-evident" when several people (including Tony) disagree? I asked if you had evidence, and you've not actually provided any. Not that I'm surprised, of course!

[Chrissie777]

Hi All!
Am I the only person who loves both these illustrators equally?
It could be my age (42 with a strong determined chin!),but I feel that it is great to have BOTH sets of illustrations.
As a child I used to spend hours finding the same illustrated scenes by the two ladies and compare them,looking for minute differences and indeed similarities.
I do feel its eventually an 'age thing' and that my generation is possibly the only one that could even consider Betty on equal terms with good old Eileen!

Hi Pete,

Betty Maxey is new to me, so I checked her out in the Cave of Books and looked at her illustrations from 1978 from "Five on a Treasure Island". Yes, it must be an "age thing". You are 42 and I'm 57 now. I grew up with the Soper illustrations in Germany since 1965. Then in the mid seventies the same thing happened in Germany: the Famous Five books got new illustrations from Wolfgang Hennecke and I found them soooooo ugly and way too modern (but that exactly was Bertelsmann's intention: to modernize the Famous Five...I always wondered why my generation loved the fact that these books took place years before we were born, but the next generation felt it was old-fashioned???).
Even when I was just 20 years old in 1975, I loved the fact that the Famous Five stories were set in the forties and fifties. I adored the clothes they wear, the old cars etc. It was so different from other books.
The new German illustrator Wolfgang Hennecke (like Betty Maxey) gave Uncle Quentin a different hair style (longer hair) and the kids wear blue jeans now. Even the castle looks much better on the Soper illustrations than on Maxey's.
BUT that's just me.
As I've mentioned here before, I replaced my Hennecke Famous Five books over time with original Soper illustrations books, but it took me several years to accomplish that.

Same with the Adventure series. I wouldn't enjoy it half as much if I had one of those awful new editions without Stuart Tresilian's illustrations. I'm just reading the first chapter from "The Valley of Adventure" in English while comparing the pages with the first chapter in my German edition which has much less illustrations than my 1978 MacMillan hardcover copy in English.

[Tony Summerfield]

It is self-evident that those pictures were machine-produced.

Stephen I.

You and your theories, Stephen! Everybody else thinks that you are talking a load of rubbish and you still maintain you are right!

[Fiona1986]

Think your quote has gone a bit wrong, Tony, as I didn't say that!

[Tony Summerfield]

Sorry about that, Fiona - more haste less speed required!

[Chrissie777]

I always feel sorry to read about changes like that. My copies of the Famous Five books are the revised ones (Knight paperbacks dating from the late 1960s-1970s). As a child I felt that the Adventure, Find-Outers, Barney and Secret series had a special atmosphere but that the Famous Five and Secret Seven series lacked something. I couldn't quite put my finger on it but I'm wondering now whether it might have been the fact that the Famous Five and Secret Seven books I read had been updated.

Hello Anita,

Did you ever get an old copy from "Five on a Treasure Island" with the original text and all the beautiful Soper illustrations?
I'm convinced you could feel the magic that so many of us felt as kids when we read old FF books.

[Anita Bensoussane]

I've got a Fabbri Publishing edition of Five on a Treasure Island which has the original text and all Eileen Soper's internal illustrations, Chrissie, and I particularly enjoy reading that version. The text is not a lot different from my 1970s copy but the illustrations are beautifully produced (pity about the cover though, which has an inferior illustration by someone other than Eileen Soper). Fabbri only released the one title as it was part of a Classic Adventures Series of well-known children's books.

[Chrissie777]

Yes, "Five on a Treasure Island" is a classic!!!

[Moonraker]

Anita, that looks interesting. I have looked at Amazon, and they are selling copies from 1p! I'd like to look at it, but I have so many Five's, I don't really want to start a new series!

I wish I had bought some of (can't remember his name's) books from the stand next to the Society stall's. He had many Five's in d/js at remarkable prices. Tony told me his name, but there seems to be no online way of ordering.

[Anita Bensoussane]

The Fabbri book came with an accompanying magazine, Nigel, though there's not much of note in it. Five on a Treasure Island was the only Enid Blyton title published in the Classic Adventures Series.

You're probably thinking of Colin Harding's stall, but he doesn't sell books online as far as I know.

[Chrissie777]

I have to check out Colin Harding's stall in May next year at the Blyton Day. Is he a member of EBS?