Who Was Enid Boyten?

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Moonraker
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Re: Who Was Enid Boyten?

Post by Moonraker »

zaidi wrote:Great! Wow you're lucky to be a relative of someone who was writer.
I am indirectly related to Charles Dickens. Can't say I've ever felt that I was lucky, though. :|
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Re: Who Was Enid Boyten?

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Ever been visited by three ghosts at Christmas, Nigel?
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Re: Who Was Enid Boyten?

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Thankfully not, Paul!
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Re: Who Was Enid Boyten?

Post by Kate Mary »

If anyone fancies reading an Enid Boyten story at least one is available online. It was published in the Girls' Crystal in August 1945:

http://www.friardale.co.uk/Girls%20Crys ... %20514.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Also in this issue is the first episode of the serial "Detective June's Most Thrilling Case" by Peter Langley. If you read this too, fear not, the rest of the story is on the Friardale website:

http://www.friardale.co.uk/Girls%20Crys ... rystal.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Enjoy,

Kate
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Re: Who Was Enid Boyten?

Post by Anita Bensoussane »

Thanks very much for that, Kate. I've just read 'Claudine and the Whistling Tower' and it contains quite a few Blyton-like ingredients, but the whole tone of the story is very different. Comics and magazines from that period frequently contain stories about towers, passageways, secret signals and messages, plucky young girls, etc. but they tend to be written in a fast-paced, sensationalist style. Of course, "Claudine and the Whistling Tower' is only a short story but I have read serials with similar themes. I'm drawn more deeply into Enid Blyton's fictional worlds, perhaps because of her slow build-ups which allow us to spend time with the characters and become familiar with the landscapes of her stories before the action takes off.
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Re: Who Was Enid Boyten?

Post by Kate Mary »

Glad you enjoyed it, Anita. I thought it was worth posting to give forumites a chance to compare Blyton with Boyten. It is very much formula fiction but I love it and have a fair collection of Girls' Crystal and School Friend Annuals from the 40s and 50s. However, Blyton remains my favourite too.

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Re: Who Was Enid Boyten?

Post by Kate Mary »

More complete Enid Boyten stories are now available on the Friardale website if anyone wishes to read them. "Their Helper in the Scarlet Cloak: An Enthralling Story of School Life and Mystery" and "The Secret of the Wrecker's Lantern" is thrilling stuff. The two stories of "Jean and her Wonder Dog" are great fun too.

http://www.friardale.co.uk/Girls%20Crys ... %20533.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://www.friardale.co.uk/Girls%20Crys ... %20537.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://www.friardale.co.uk/Girls%20Crys ... %20540.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://www.friardale.co.uk/Girls%20Crys ... %20542.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Kate
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Re: Who Was Enid Boyten?

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I lived in Muswell Hill with my mother from about 1951 - 1953. Horace Boyten and his sister Enid lived in the upper part of our house with their cats. They always had lots of copies of Girls Crystal and School Friend for me to read. He always said that he wrote under his sister's name because his publishers wanted a female nom de plume. I do remember how upset he was over the Enid Blyton / Enid Boyten business. I remember the Boytens as a lovely couple who we kept in touch with after we moved house to Highgate. Unfortunately I lost touch with them after my mother died in 1969.
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Re: Who Was Enid Boyten?

Post by Kate Mary »

Thank you for that Helen, it explains why he chose Enid as a pen-name. I really admire all those Amalgamated Press writers who produced stories day in and day out, not great literature but certainly great fun.

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Re: Who Was Enid Boyten?

Post by Anita Bensoussane »

That's interesting. Thanks, Helen.
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Re: Who Was Enid Boyten?

Post by Lucky Star »

Thanks for clarifying that Helen. Very interesting.
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Re: Who Was Enid Boyten?

Post by pete9012S »

The Holiday Camp Stowaway - Enid Boyten

https://imgur.com/a/hfiLn5y" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

A short sample of 'her' writing.
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Re: Who Was Enid Boyten?

Post by timv »

'Enid Boyten' seems to have been one of the former staff writers on the 'Gem' and 'Magnet' boys' magazines in its heyday in the 1920s-30s when its star author was 'Frank Richards' (Charles Hamilton) the creator of Billy Bunter, given that it appears that most of the 1950s 'Girls Crystal' writers were recruited en masse from that background by the editor. It's an interesting phenomenon how much the 'Greyfriars' stories then influenced a whole generation of school story authors - though of course in the case of magazine story writers they were much more constrained by space than people who wrote full books and it was easier to stick to a storyline and background that was a proven success.

'Boyten's and his colleagues' stories are a lot more defined by cliches and repetitive storylines than Enid's - though the Peter Langley 'Noel and June' detective series was as inventive as Enid's 'Find Outers' . Indeed most of the 1940s-50s magazine stories, which have now slipped out of popular memory, were usually fairly predictable in plots - though the strict deadlines and need to keep on churning out material must have been exhausting and the writers usually managed to vary the plots if not the overall outlines. Indeed Malory Towers and St Clares break away from this sort of stories, making Enid more of an innovator - and many of her original readers would have known these magazines and regarded her work as something new and exciting .

Enid notably never resorted to the classic Girls Crystal plotline of 'Our Heroine' being unjustly suspected of some misdemeanour or criminal behaviour/ theft/ vandalism by the staff and having to clear herself by finding the culprit - who was almost inevitably a crooked or bullying prefect!
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Re: Who Was Enid Boyten?

Post by timv »

The idea of a male girls' magazine story writer using a female pseudonym seems to have come from Charles Hamilton himself, as he wrote his girls' school stories in the 1920s under the name of 'Hilda Richards' the supposed sister of his boys' school story pseudonym 'Frank Richards'. Simultaneously his fellow-writer Horace Phillips was writing stories about 'Morcove School' girls' boarding-school on a clifftop in N Devon - a possible part-inspiration for Enid setting Malory Towers on a similar SW England clifftop - in 'School Friend' magazine as 'Marjorie Stanton' . This sensational series, running from c.1921 to 1936, and its over-the-top storylines shows that Enid was writing 'toned-down' and realistic stories compared to the magazine 'norm' , which has elements of modern soap operas on TV . It had assorted crooked businessman parents trying to buy up and knock down the school (even Jo Jones' father never went that far), fake Headmistresses, fake or foreign spy teachers, vengeful school maids targeting pupils whose parents had earlier sacked them, any number of 'set-ups' to unjustly get a pupil expelled for stealing exam papers, and the inevitable hunts for Spanish Armada treasure in local caves. Similarly, Enid's circus stories were tame compared to the 1930s-40s magazine circus stories which were heavily reliant on criminals and sabotage by spiteful rivals, usually in an acrobatic or pony act.

The idea of adventure on a cruise-liner (see 'Ship of Adventure') may also have come from these magazines; in 'Girls Crystal' from 1939 'Daphne Grayson' (actually male writer C Cecil Graveley) featured a group of teenagers having adventures on board cruise liners, billed as 'The Merrymakers Afloat'. This went on right into the early 1950s, with a mixture of crime , secret campaigns to find evidence exonerating a 'framed' relative by a passenger in disguise, and treasure- and spy-hunting. The sort of 'thriller' stories we find in the Adventure series were tame by comparison to some of these - which shows that the young readers would often have been used to more of this genre than you would think from just noting what was printed in contemporary children's books .
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Re: Who Was Enid Boyten?

Post by Daisy »

I have a selection of these stories which I used to buy as they came out and jolly good value they were - at first 7d and then, shock horror, they went up to 8d! I read through my whole collection about a year ago and jolly adventurous and dangerous some of them were too! They include one by Enid Boyten.
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