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Tony Summerfield
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Wishing-Chair

Post by Tony Summerfield »

I am listing below the missing chapters from Adventures of the Wishing Chair - all other chapters are in the same order as your listing.

4.) The Ho-Ho Wizard
5.) The Witch's Cat
6.) The Dear-Me Goblin
7.) The Adventure of the Green Enchanter
8.) Peter's Own Adventure
9.) The Old Old Man

31.) The Snoogle's Castle
32.) Topsy Turvyland
33.) The Chair Runs Away Again

I hope this sorts it all out for you.

Best wishes
Tony
Raci
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Post by Raci »

Hi Tony!

Thanks!
So.......
The original 1st edition of 'Adventures of the Wishing-chair' had a total of 36 chapters in some future editions this was then reduced to 31 chapters (mine being a Newness 8th) and then Dean took out a further 5 chapters leaving only 26 in most versions of this book. :?

Is it only the 1st edition / 1st impression that have all 36 chapters?

Do you know if the 2 other short stories were written after the Omnibus?

I wonder why some of the stories were taken out of this book? Enid must have felt originaly that all the chapters were needed to form the full story otherwise she wouldn't have included them.
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Anita Bensoussane
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Wishing-Chair

Post by Anita Bensoussane »

Whew! Well, we're managing to clear up a few things between us all, anyway!

Raci, I sometimes wonder if certain publishers cut things out because they want all the books in a particular series to be of a similar size. The Dean & Son Ltd Rewards are all similar in size and, in various books in the series, bigger or smaller typeface is used to make the story fit into the required number of pages. Perhaps there just wasn't room for the extra Wishing-Chair chapters. That leads to another question though - how did publishers decide which chapters to exclude?

I was puzzled as a child by a comment in Adventures of the Wishing-Chair (near the beginning of "The Disappearing Island.") Blyton writes: "They [the towers and spires of Fairyland] glittered in the sun and Peter wanted to go down and visit the Prince and Princess they had once rescued." What Prince and Princess? I always wondered. The children hadn't rescued any Prince and Princess. What I didn't know was that they had rescued Prince Merry and Princess Sylfai in the chapters titled "The Witch's Cat," "The Dear-Me Goblin," "The Adventure of the Green Enchanter" and "Peter's Own Adventure" - chapters which had been removed!

Thanks for answering my query about "The Last Adventure of All," Raci. It makes sense that it was the last chapter of the first book.

Anita
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Wishing Chair

Post by booklover »

Hello everyone - I have been reading all the postings with great interest! :D

Thanks Raci for the list of all the chapters. I'm sure everyone appreciates the list very much.

If I could just revisit More Wishing Chair Tales from the Wishing Chair Collection. I surmised earlier that Dean's chapter order was "wrong" and Mammoth's was "right".

From Raci's list, we can see that Dean's 17 chapters are, in order, the following:

- chapters 1-5: chapters 5-9 from the original Adventures of the Wishing Chair.

- chapters 6-10: chapters 32-36 from the original Adventures of the Wishing Chair (so as Raci has noted the seemingly odd occurrence of chapter 10 called "The Last Adventure of All" is not odd at all).

- chapters 11-14: the four chapters from the 1952 omnibus.

- chapter 15: "Santa Claus and the Wishing Chair": from Sunny Stories as Tony noted in his first post.

- chapters 16-17: "The Wishing Chair Again" also from Sunny Stories, divided into two chapters and renamed as noted earlier.

So it isn't a question of "right" or "wrong" order. Dean has simply republished all the deleted chapters in the same order they first appeared (assuming the two Sunny Stories were published after the 1952 omnibus, a question Raci raised earlier). Mammoth, on the other hand, has tried to make all the chapters look like a logically constructed book (eg by putting the four chapters from the 1952 omnibus at the start of the book with a first chapter called "Home for Half Term".)

I stand corrected (again) (see Tony's email below). Thanks for clearing this up, Tony.
Last edited by booklover on 07 Jun 2005, 11:12, edited 2 times in total.
Tony Summerfield
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Wishing Chair

Post by Tony Summerfield »

There can't be much that needs to be cleared up now on Adventures of the Wishing-Chair, but late me state again that only the first edition published in November 1937 had 36 chapters. By the time the second edition was published in October 1939 it had been reduced to 31 chapters and from 248 pages down to 216. Newnes might have felt that they needed to lose 32 pages to make the book pay - I don't know!

The other point that needs clearing up are the two short stories from Sunny Stories - both published in two parts in No 91 The Wishing Chair Again and No 92 The End of the Adventure - published in October 1938 and No 101 Santa Claus and the Wishing-Chair and No 102 An Adventure with Santa Claus (possibly these were joined together in the recent books), published in December 1938 - a long time before the second book let alone the Omnibus!

Hope all is now straightened out.

Best wishes
Tony
Raci
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Post by Raci »

:D Hi Tony! :D

Thanks for all your help clearing up chapter/story titles and dates!
I really appreciate it! :D


I have updated the list again so we should now have all the chapter/story titles in the right order.
If anyone spots any mistakes let me know and I'll correct them.

Now I know the order I just have to get hold of the missing stories
*rubs hands with glee*
Such a shame LOL!
More stories to read!!!!! :lol:
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booklover
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Wishing Chair Omnibus

Post by booklover »

After a short break, it's back to this thread!

Once again working off Raci's wonderful list, I've prepared a list of the order in which to read the Dean editions of the Wishing Chair stories to reproduce the original order of the stories:

1. Adventures of the Wishing Chair: chapters 1-4
2. More Wishing Chair Tales: chapters 1-5 (five chapters deleted from the original 1937 Adventures of the Wishing Chair)
3. Adventures of the Wishing Chair: chapters 5-26 (ie chapter 5 to the end of the Dean book)
4. More Wishing Chair Tales: chapters 6-10 (the last five chapters of the original 1937 Adventures of the Wishing Chair)
5. More Wishing Chair Tales: chapters 16-17 (Sunny Stories: the two chapter short story "The Wishing Chair Again")
6. More Wishing Chair Tales: chapter 15 (Sunny Stories: the two chapter short story about "Santa Claus and the Wishing Chair")
7. The Wishing Chair Again: chapters 1-25 (ie the whole book)
8. More Wishing Chair Tales: chapters 11-14 (the four chapters from the 1952 omnibus).

All of this can be achieved with The Wishing Chair Collection omnibus.

I wonder what it will be like to read all the stories in their original order? - for the first time! :roll:
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Anita Bensoussane
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Wishing Chair

Post by Anita Bensoussane »

Cheers, Booklover! :D

Now - has anyone got the Dean Faraway Tree Collection? Or the Amelia Jane Collection? Any gems in those?! :lol:

Anita
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Re: Wishing Chair

Post by Moonraker »

Anita Bensoussane wrote:Cheers, Booklover! :D

Now - has anyone got the Dean Faraway Tree Collection?
Anita
Bought "The Faraway Tree Collection" (Dean - green cover) an hour ago in Wilton Shopping Village! £4.99. I don't think I ever read it as a child, so really looking forward to it.
I'm reading the Dean "Wishing Chair Collection" at the moment, which I am enjoying immensely. I could've done with booklover's listing before I started! I didn't realise they were all in the wrong order!
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booklover
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Post by booklover »

Hi everyone!

I have a copy of The Faraway Tree Collection. There's an ominous statement that The Magic Faraway Tree has been "slightly" abridged. I wonder what Dean's done this time? :evil:
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Faraway Tree Collection omnibus

Post by booklover »

Further to my last post, I've now had a chance to review The Faraway Tree Collection omnibus.

The book contains the three Faraway Tree books - ie The Enchanted Wood, The Magic Faraway Tree and The Folk of the Faraway Tree. As I said before, The Magic Faraway Tree is stated to have been "slightly abridged".

I will start with the good news: The Enchanted Wood (29 chapters) and The Folk of the Faraway Tree (26 chapters) seem to be complete reproductions of the 1970s Dean "revised" editions.

Now the bad news: The 1970s Dean "revised" edition of The Magic Faraway Tree contains 26 chapters. The omnibus "slightly abridged" version only has 20 chapters, the 20th chapter being "The Land of Magic Medicines". That is, the following chapters are not included:

(21) Some Peculiar Adventures
(22) Watzisname has some Queer News
(23) The Land of Tempers
(24) A Most Exciting Time
(25) Everything Comes Right
(26) The Land of Presents.

Dean has omitted the very exciting scenes involving Moon-Face and Silky being taken prisoner by Sir Stamp-a-Lot and Dame Yell-Around from The Land of Tempers. They have also left out the lovely visit to The Land of Presents that follows.

But to make the story seem ordered, Dean has cobbled together bits and pieces of chapters 20, 21 and 22 under the heading of chapter 20, then added the final paragraph from chapter 26(!) to finish the book.

In particular, in The Land of Magic Medicines, Dean includes the text up to where the pixie asks Jo (in chapter 20) if he has come for some medicine for shining eyes. Everything after that is left out until the scene (in chapter 21) where the goblin asks the children what medicine they want. That is, Dean has left out Dick growing tall and then being shrunk back to size and Saucepan Man taking a pill that makes his nose grow.

Having resumed the story with the goblin's question, Dean publishes the paragraphs where Jo receives the Get-Well medicine, then has him state:

"Now, come along everyone. Let's go and give dear Mother a dose of this magic medicine. It will be so lovely to see her looking well again and rushing around the house as she always did. "

The rest of chapter 21 is then omitted. The next paragraph is the first paragraph of chapter 22 - ie "Fanny was delighted to see Jo, Bessie and Dick back." The story then follows chapter 22 up to the following paragraph:

"We'll put the rest of the bottle of magic medicine away", she said [ie the children's mother], I don't need it any more - but it would be very useful if anyone else is ill".

The rest of the book is then omitted, except for the last paragraph of the final chapter after the children visit The Land of Presents. Even this is modified, as it originally described the children walking through the wood.

I am very upset with Dean. :evil: :evil: With so much of the story left out, the book is hardly "slightly abridged".
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Post by Raci »

I can completely see where you are coming from, I too would be mad if I bought this copy and found chunks missing! I don't see the need to butcher a great story! It is not going to improve it by missing parts out!
:evil: :evil: :evil:
It makes you wonder why they've done it especially considering they made the effort to include all the wishing chair stories in that omnibus!

However........
While we're back on the subject of abridged or not:
Does anyone know if the Dean versions of Enchanted Wood, Magic FT and Folk of the FT were the original full editions or did they mess with them in the same way they did Adventures of the Wishing Chair?
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Re: Wishing Chair Omnibus

Post by Moonraker »

booklover wrote:After a short break, it's back to this thread!

Once again working off Raci's wonderful list, I've prepared a list of the order in which to read the Dean editions of the Wishing Chair stories to reproduce the original order of the stories:

1. Adventures of the Wishing Chair: chapters 1-4
2. More Wishing Chair Tales: chapters 1-5 (five chapters deleted from the original 1937 Adventures of the Wishing Chair)
3. Adventures of the Wishing Chair: chapters 5-26 (ie chapter 5 to the end of the Dean book)
4. More Wishing Chair Tales: chapters 6-10 (the last five chapters of the original 1937 Adventures of the Wishing Chair)
5. More Wishing Chair Tales: chapters 16-17 (Sunny Stories: the two chapter short story "The Wishing Chair Again")
6. More Wishing Chair Tales: chapter 15 (Sunny Stories: the two chapter short story about "Santa Claus and the Wishing Chair")
7. The Wishing Chair Again: chapters 1-25 (ie the whole book)
8. More Wishing Chair Tales: chapters 11-14 (the four chapters from the 1952 omnibus).

All of this can be achieved with The Wishing Chair Collection omnibus.

I wonder what it will be like to read all the stories in their original order? - for the first time! :roll:
Thanks so much, booklover. I've just finished reading the Dean omnibus in that order. It really is odd why Dean's published the stories in the wrong order.
One mystery, chapter XII CREE-EE-EAK
He knew that noise, all right! It was made by the wishing chair. It was about to grow its lovely wings of green and yellow! ..........Then one bump sprouted a few red feathers! Hurrah!

The children made no comment on the fact that the wings had returned to the original red colour.[/i]

I'm going to start reading the Dean "Faraway Tree Collection" now! I'm fuming about the missing chapters though! Perhaps I should have bought second hand originals!
Last edited by Moonraker on 18 Jun 2005, 16:18, edited 1 time in total.
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Raci
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Post by Raci »

You'd think that was a bit of an obvious mistake for a proof reader to miss!
:roll: Maybe they just didn't know the story well enough to pick up on it!
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booklover
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Re: Wishing Chair Omnibus

Post by booklover »

moonraker wrote: Thanks so much, booklover. I've just finished reading the Dean omnibus in that order.

I'm going to start reading the Dean "Faraway Tree Collection" now! I'm fuming about the missing chapters though! Perhaps I should have bought second hand originals!
Moonraker, you're probably the first person for 50 years to read the Wishing Chair books in the correct order! I hope the story was great when read that way.

I agree you should go and buy the second-hand originals of The Magic Faraway Tree. The missing chapters are too important not to read them. The Dean and son edition from the late 60s-early 70s, with its bright yellow cover and red title, would do the job nicely.

Raci wondered why the chapters were deleted. My guess is that it was simply to make each book the same size. I have copies of four of the Collection books (O'Clock Tales, Family series, Wishing Chair and Faraway Tree) and each book is around 500-510 pages. But by making each book the same size, Dean has sacrificed the integrity of some of the individual stories. :evil: :evil: Surely Dean would have realised that all Blyton fans would want the whole of each story, even if some of the omnibus books were slightly longer than the others? :evil: :evil:
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