Comments on Enid Blyton in 'So Much to Tell' Biography

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Belly
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Comments on Enid Blyton in 'So Much to Tell' Biography

Post by Belly »

Hi all

I have just read the excellent 'So Much to Tell' biography on Kaye Webb (of Puffin Club Fame). I thought some might be interested in the author's (Valerie Grove's) comments below:

Many children of the 1950s, myself included, read the much less intellectual (compared to the Young Elizabethan) Enid Blyton Magazine, which carried the absurd strapline, 'The only magazine I write!' Miss Blyton's letter to readers from her home at Green Hedges, Beaconsfield, Bucks, made us feel we knew her and her daughters, Gillian and Imogen, and their pets. When I was ten, my sister Alison and I, and our friend Rosalind, started our own Pony Club (though we had no ponies) and I wrote to Enid Blyton inviting Imogen and Gillian to join. Miss Blyton's polite reply explained that actually 'Gillian now has children of her own, and Imogen is at university!' I was thrilled to get the letter from Green Hedges, all the same...The Puffin Club would provide every child with a link to favourite authors.
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Anita Bensoussane
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Re: Comments on Enid Blyton in 'So Much to Tell' Biography

Post by Anita Bensoussane »

Belly wrote:...Enid Blyton Magazine, which carried the absurd strapline, 'The only magazine I write!'
I think the reason for the strapline was that, when Enid Blyton stopped writing Sunny Stories and launched Enid Blyton's Magazine, the editors of Sunny Stories kept quiet about her departure and child readers were left confused about whether she still wrote it.

I had a lot of Puffin paperbacks as a child but somehow it never occurred to me to join the Puffin Club. They often contain lovely introductions which suggest the editor had a real knowledge of and love for the books, for example the introduction to Clive King's Stig of the Dump which ends: "In an ideal world every solitary child should be able to find himself a Stig, but if they aren't so fortunate then sharing Barney's luck is the next best thing."
"Heyho for a starry night and a heathery bed!" - Jack, The Secret Island.

"There is no bond like the bond of having read and liked the same books."
- E. Nesbit, The Wonderful Garden.


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Belly
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Re: Comments on Enid Blyton in 'So Much to Tell' Biography

Post by Belly »

Hi Anita

Hope you are well :).

I didn't know about the Puffin Club, think we are that bit too young. There seemed to be a big following amongst those a bit older than us. Hugely popular around 1970-77 or so I think. Be interested to see if any of our older forumites were members. I've just got the two Puffin albums, they're actually very good, fantastic article from C.S. Lewis etc.

I am constantly amazed that Enid seemed to reply to nearly every letter than was sent to her (?)
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Re: Comments on Enid Blyton in 'So Much to Tell' Biography

Post by Belly »

Thanks for sharing the Stig comments, very moving. Kaye Webb (editor) was an amazing lady who led a very interesting life. I think you'd like the book, Anita, there's quite a bit on children's literature. Kaye knew Roald Dahl, Noel Streatfield, Eleanor Farjeon, Joan Aiken and Rumer Godden quite well. There are many interesting anecdotes and observations.
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Re: Comments on Enid Blyton in 'So Much to Tell' Biography

Post by Anita Bensoussane »

Belly wrote:I didn't know about the Puffin Club, think we are that bit too young.
The Puffin Club was advertised at the back of books by Noel Streatfeild, E. Nesbit, etc., but I didn't take much notice and didn't really understand what it was all about. The advert seemed to me to show a sinister-looking man in a black hat and cloak, hiding half his face, which was off-putting. I didn't realise till I returned to the books as an adult that the "man" was actually a puffin!
Belly wrote:I've just got the two Puffin albums, they're actually very good, fantastic article from C.S. Lewis etc.
Ooh - which ones have you got? Would it be possible to provide a link, please? I've got one Puffin Annual but it doesn't have a C. S. Lewis article, and I've never been sure how many annuals were produced. Was it only two?

The book about Kaye Webb sounds great - I'll have to look out for that!

Edit: Silly me - just realised I've got Annuals 1 and 2, plus another book called Puffin's Pleasure, and Annual 1 contains the article about C. S. Lewis (by Roger Lancelyn Green).
"Heyho for a starry night and a heathery bed!" - Jack, The Secret Island.

"There is no bond like the bond of having read and liked the same books."
- E. Nesbit, The Wonderful Garden.


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Belly
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Re: Comments on Enid Blyton in 'So Much to Tell' Biography

Post by Belly »

Hi Anita, how funny you've jogged my memory. I also thought it was a man in the picture and found if faintly alarming. There were only two albums (as far as I know). Just looked article up, it's in Puffin Annual number one. My mistake it's by Roger Lancelyn Green but it's about C.S. Lewis (whom he knew well):

One unforgettable evening C.S.Lewis said: 'Ive been writing a fantasy for young readers...' He then read the first two chapters of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. He stopped and said 'Do you think it's worth going on with?"

There is no bond like the bond of having read and liked the same books,' says someone in one of E. Nesbit's stories: and that was how I got to know C.S. Lewis. I had been to his lectures and met him on more or less formal occasions, but this time we were at a wedding reception and both felt very out of it. We took our glasses of champagne into a window-recess and were soon taking about George MacDonald and Rider Haggard. And then about stories of fantasy and imagination and why hardly anyone seemed to read them and publishers wouldn't publish them.

'Ah' said Lewis, 'you wait until Tolkein's great book comes out...! But I don't suppose he'll ever finish it!'

This was in 1945 and the book which Tolkein would never finish (because whenever he had time to get on with it, he spent most of it in revising what he'd written) was The Lord of the Rings.

The article goes on Lancelyn Green comments about on The Lion, Witch and Wardrobe:

I told him I thought the book was worth going on with. For as he read there crept over me a feeling of awe and excitement: not only that it was better than most children's books which were appearing at the time - but the conviction that I was listening to a great classic.

'I started it some time ago' said Lewis, 'but it didn't work. There was no Aslan in it then'. I began again and I can see it clearly right to the end. So I wrote these two chapters but Tolkein doesn't like them...What do you really think?'

I told him again what I really thought, and pointed out how natural it was that Tolkein should not like it: for his fantasy world, the world of The Hobbit, was so very different - with a different greatness. As different, I think I said, as The Princess and Curdie from The Wind in the Willows.

Lancelyn Green adds later 'I still wish he had omitted Father Christmas'. 'That, I think, must have been a left-over from the very first, pre-Aslan, idea for a book. It was a picture which was too vivid to be left out. For Lewis built up the Narnian stories from pictures, perhaps sometimes from dreams. He certainly dreamt vividly and was subject to appalling nightmares: I remembered so few of my dreams, even if they were nightmares: 'You may thank God you don't' he exclaimed with an intensity that made me start.

'If the children in the Narnian stories speak a little oddly, or seem to be imitating E.Nesbit's children, one must remember that Lewis was himself a child with Nesbit was writing - he is not borrowing from her, but both are giving us glimpses of the real thing'.

There's a lot more, will come back when more time.

There is a passage on what C.S. Lewis said about his work. I'd love to write but see scenes and characters only in 'flashes' or fragmented snapshots which don't combine in the way I'd like them too. I seem to be in good company, although C.S. Lewis's came together:

In a certain sense I have never made a story (echoes of Blyton here). With me the process is much more like bird-watching than either talking or building. I see pictures. Sometimes these pictures have a common flavour or even a common smell, which groups them together. Keep quiet and watch and they will begin joining themselves up. If you were very lucky (and I have never been as lucky as all that) a whole set might join themselves so consistently that there you had a complete story: without doing anything yourself.

Re: TLTWATW: it all began with a picture of a Faun carrying an umbrella and parcels in a snowy wood. This picture had been in my mind since I was about sixteen. Then one day, when I was about forty, I said to myself 'Let's try to make a story about it'. At first I had very little idea about how the story would go. But then suddenly Aslan came bounding into it...I don't know where the lion came from or why but once he was there he pulled the whole story together, and soon he pulled the six other Narnian stories after him'.
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Re: Comments on Enid Blyton in 'So Much to Tell' Biography

Post by Belly »

Oh well :). I love the famous author/person's comments section on various paintings in the same annual. I've shared the Yehudi Menuhin remarks on St Jerome in a Rocky Landscape by Joachim Patinir with my girls, not the sort of thing they come across very often. Puffin makes it all very accessible somehow.
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Anita Bensoussane
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Re: Comments on Enid Blyton in 'So Much to Tell' Biography

Post by Anita Bensoussane »

Funny that you too thought the puffin was a man, Julia!

As I said in my edit, I found I had got the article after all but there are a number of C. S. Lewis fans on here so I'm sure several people will be interested to read what you've quoted. In fact, I'll copy and paste the relevant part of your post into the C. S. Lewis thread (Other Authors) if that's okay, so if anyone wants to comment they can do so there. It's interesting that Roger Lancelyn Green has quoted the line from E. Nesbit which I use in my signature!
"Heyho for a starry night and a heathery bed!" - Jack, The Secret Island.

"There is no bond like the bond of having read and liked the same books."
- E. Nesbit, The Wonderful Garden.


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Kate Mary
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Re: Comments on Enid Blyton in 'So Much to Tell' Biography

Post by Kate Mary »

I joined the Puffin Club when it first started in 1967. I can remember the Puffin Post magazine, don't have them any more but I still have my Puffin badge.

Kate
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Re: Comments on Enid Blyton in 'So Much to Tell' Biography

Post by Belly »

Did you get the annuals etc? Kaye Webb sounds wonderfully eccentric in the way she ran things. Competition prizes were whatever took her fancy, gardening trowels, curios bought on European holidays, parasols, days out at a farm. Everything seemed gloriously bespoke back then.

You can still join the Puffin club, my children have their badges. Magazine isn't quite the same these days I think, in my opinion it seems geared towards marketing books without any of the personal touches of yesteryear.
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Re: Comments on Enid Blyton in 'So Much to Tell' Biography

Post by Kate Mary »

I didn't have the annuals, being a member for only a year, I was 12/13 at the time and shortly after I moved on to adult writers such as Agatha Christie and Georgette Heyer. The Puffin Post used to have short stories from famous Puffin authors as well as competitions, puzzles etc, on the back cover were adverts for forthcoming Puffins. I had heard that the magazine is a shadow of its former self. Happy memories, anyway.

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