Books mistakenly attributed to Enid Blyton

[Judith Crabb]

In 'The Real Enid Blyton' Nadia Cohen attributes the 'Blue Pirate' early reader series to Enid. They were written by Sheila K. McCullagh.
Apart from confused or nervous competitors on quiz shows (was it Enid who wrote Biggles?) in my experience such a mistaken attribution is unique.
(Now I suppose someone will tell me it's a late-career pseudonym of Enid!)

[Anita Bensoussane]

Sheila K. McCullagh wrote a number of reading schemes, including Tim and the Hidden People. My daughter used to like Sheila K. McCullagh's Puddle Lane books, which were published by Ladybird. There was also a Puddle Lane TV series.

I've never read Nadia Cohen's The Real Enid Blyton but I get the impression it was compiled in haste, without proper research!

Talking of books mistakenly attributed to Enid Blyton, there was a Dragon paperback edition of The House in Cornwall by Noel Streatfeild which had "Copyright © Enid Blyton" at the front and mentioned Uncle Quentin in the blurb on the back cover (the uncle in the story is actually Uncle Murdock). There's a thread about it here:

viewtopic.php?t=6259

[Judith Crabb]

Thanks for the link, Anita. I remember reading this topic some time ago but this time I read it more carefully and I note that on the covers scanned by Tony is the information that a 'Gordon Crabb' illustrated the front cover.
So there must have been some Crabbs who didn't emigrate to Australia in the 1800s.
As for the weird mistakes - partly explicable, but still weird. Now I've decided that the next children's book I read will be 'The House in Cornwall'. (I've never been to Cornwall but that's where my paternal ancestors came from.) And two of my favourite books as a child were 'The Children of Primrose Lane' and 'Party Frock', both by Noel Streatfeild.

[Anita Bensoussane]

I love Noel Streatfeild but The House in Cornwall is one of my least-liked titles, sadly, though I do like The Children of Primrose Lane. My own favourites are Apple Bough, The Circus is Coming, Tennis Shoes and Ballet Shoes. I also like her autobiographical trilogy (A Vicarage Family, etc.) and the four Gemma books. One of these days I intend to read The Fearless Treasure, which was recommended by Debbie.

[Viv of Ginger Pop]

Nadia Cohen seems to have found a niche in writing about renowned authors, including Roald Dahl and Beatrix Potter. If the quality of Nadia Cohen's research on Enid Blyton is anything to go by, perhaps they should be labelled as fiction rather than biography!

The mistake highlighted by Judith would have been very easy to research.

I was furious with what Nadia Cohen said about golliwogs in Noddy - it was out-and-out defamation of character!

See my video Good Golly - the toy that fought fascism at 11 mins in
Video link
https://youtu.be/oBoQ0hyytXg

In the grand scheme of things, does it matter that a silly rag-doll is derided?

Yes, because letting idiots like Nadia Cohen get away with saying palpably untrue things about golly in order to character assassinate Enid Blyton herself, emboldened other idiots to undermine everyone else, most recently Roald Dahl.

[Debbie]

House in Cornwall is good but not one of my favourites. It's NS go at an adventure book, but it's not as good as EB imo.

The Children of Primrose lane is much better, although it's a WWII spy story, which is probably easier to write. However in that one NS gets away from her typical eldest child, youngest talented beauty and difficult middle child. There's hints of them, but they have much more personality than that, which i think is one of the things I like about that one.

I have the copy of House in Cornwall which refers to Uncle Quentin. It also spells one of the main character's names wrongly on the back cover, and misses another out, so goodness knows how that got past editors.

I think the one thing NS did do really well in it is, despite an implausible plot, she's thought about the children's moves carefully for escape. There's no secret passageways appearing out of nowhere at just the right time, or mysterious butler suddenly turns out to be a secret agent just as they're caught or that sort of convenience that a lot of children's books tend to make use of.
The children do really have to think through the escape and how it's done, and it works, although they are really scared.
And the atmosphere is very creepy even though you don't learn much about the main villains, they are very threatening from what others say about them.