The Enid Blyton Society

Here's Roger's recent BBC Radio Solent Interview on video:

https://www.facebook.com/BBCRadioSolent ... 441575719/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Lucky Star wrote:Being cynical I wonder if Roger is planning to sell some of those wonderful illustrations he is holding up in the DM article. If so a bit of publicity like this would probably push up the price he gets for them. I must admit I would love to have some of them hanging on my wall.

What you can see in the photo of him holding up a framed picture is not the actual artwork but one of the blown up prints. The rough artwork that he has is all the same size as the actual paperback book. My two bits are framed, but I might see if I can scan them through the glass.

In case someone has spotted an Enid Blyton book in one of the articles that isn't in the Cave, it is because The Adventure of the Blue Admiral was written by Dorothy Clewes! I have a copy of the Armada book and it looks a bit different!

Tony Summerfield wrote:What you can see in the photo of him holding up a framed picture is not the actual artwork but one of the blown up prints. The rough artwork that he has is all the same size as the actual paperback book. My two bits are framed, but I might see if I can scan them through the glass.

Ah thank you Tony. They would still look nice on my wall though, original or not.

Merged with an earlier topic.

If you can access page 34 of the Times, or look under Enid Blyton on the website, there is an interesting colour article about the four boys who were the real-life inspiration for Mary Gernat's 1960s illustrations of Blyton books such as The secret of Killimooin.
I would love to upload a picture of the article so that everyone can see it, but am not sure how to do this!

Here are my two bits of artwork, note particularly the signatures are not from a neat stencil.



The images below show the rough artwork for 'Blue Admiral' and the actual paperback.

The Blue Admiral and the rest of the series by Dorothy Clewes are very good. I have read them all though do not possess any.

I do like the illustration of Mary Gernat. The Adventure of the Blue Admiral looks an intriguing book. I'll have to search one out.

Mary Mouse wrote:If you can access page 34 of the Times, or look under Enid Blyton on the website, there is an interesting colour article about the four boys who were the real-life inspiration for Mary Gernat's 1960s illustrations of Blyton books such as The secret of Killimooin.

There is already a thread on this posting, Mary Mouse.

http://www.enidblytonsociety.co.uk/foru ... 96#p252874" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;



The threads have now been merged.

Daisy wrote:The Blue Admiral and the rest of the series by Dorothy Clewes are very good. I have read them all though do not possess any.

I have Adventure on Rainbow Island as well as that was done by Armada, but at a quick glance I can't see any others. That also has a Mary Gernat cover.

Thanks, Tony. It's interesting to see the Find-Outers artwork - and to see the subtle changes to the cover of The Adventure of the Blue Admiral. I've never read anything by Dorothy Clewes but some of her book titles do sound promising.

Here's Roger's website, if anyone is interested.

http://www.theartofenidblyton.com/produ ... ton/page/5

I must admit I'm very tempted by a print of 'The Rubadub Mystery' - one of my favourite of Mary's covers.

The Mary Gernat cover for 'The Mystery of the Strange Messages' seen in this thread is definitely that of the published edition which I read in 1967; ditto the Gernat cover illustrations seen on Roger How's website for 'The Secret Island', 'The Secret of Spiggy Holes', 'The Secret Mountain', and 'The Secret of Killimooin'. The 'Sixth Form at Malory Towers' cover with just a view of June (the girl in the red swimsuit) pushing out the boat and no view of the other girl (Amanda) by the rocks in the background was the one used for the published cover; this was an imaginary scene not sketched at an actual site as far as I can tell, as the real life site which Enid seems to have used as a basis for the MT swimming-pool (the only genuine rock-cut school bathing pool in S England , but smaller than the MT one ) does not resemble this view and has no sand.
I remember the 'Summer Term at St Clares' cover of one of the twins (Isabel ?) twisting her ankle by the tennis net from 1967/8, so this was the published version. I presume that Mary Gernat was very busy around the time that the 'Cave' record notes that the Armada books came out in 1965 - she was doing the covers for two separate series by Monica Edwards (Punchbowl Farm and Romney Marsh), some first editions and others reprints, plus other reprints of earlier pony books by Gillian Baxter and the Pullein-Thompson sisters.
The 'Enid Blyton' signature on these covers is not that used in other published books by Enid - or the 'trademarked' EB signature reissued by Hachette for their Malory Towers continuations in ?2009. I am investigating, with a possibility of using some Gernat images in my own book if this is practicable.

timv wrote:The Mary Gernat cover for 'The Mystery of the Strange Messages' seen in this thread is definitely that of the published edition which I read in 1967;

This is not right, Tim. Repeating what I said above, everything that Roger How has is just the rough artwork and none of it is the finished artwork that was used in the published edition. Okay, the scene is the same, but I have both the rough artwork and the published paperback of 'Strange Messages' in front of me now and there are plenty of differences. The finished artwork is far more detailed particularly on things like faces, she just has the gist on the roughs.

How journalists love to write utterly ridiculous and misleading headlines...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/celebri ... ealed.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Is this the comparison to which you refer, Tony?