Enid's longest book?/Award Books

[Belly]

Just wondering what Enid's longest book was?

As a child the Malory Towers books seemed very long but was shocked to realise they were barely 200 pages?

All her books appear to be quite short and seem very action packed considering.

[Ming]

I'm not sure which is her longest book, but the longest Barney Mystery book is The Rilloby Fair Mystery at roughly around 350 pages (Award 2004). I find the Six Cousins books to be fairly long too.

I'm pretty sure Tony Summerfield's bibliographies will come in handy now.

*goes of muttering to bookcase*

[Philip Mannering]

I'm not sure which is her longest book, but the longest Barney Mystery book is The Rilloby Fair Mystery at roughly around 350 pages (Award 2004). I find the Six Cousins books to be fairly long too.

I'm pretty sure Tony Summerfield's bibliographies will come in handy now.

*goes of muttering to bookcase*

Hmm Ming, I am not sure if The Rilloby Fair Mystery is Blyton's longest book, the Six Cousins and the family books in my opinion are longer.
And by the way, your edition of Rilloby Fair is at roughly around 350 pages? Well, in my edition (2007 Award) there is 284 pages! A big difference! Wonder why?

[Daisy]

I imagine the only way to compare book lengths is a word count as the various editions have different sizes of type which alters the number of words on a page and therefore the number of pages in the book. The original Adventure series books are very big, but so is the font size and the later paperback versions look no longer than any other because the type is of a more usual size. Any volunteers for a word count???

[Ming]

And by the way, your edition of Rilloby Fair is at roughly around 350 pages? Well, in my edition (2007 Award) there is 284 pages! A big difference! Wonder why?

Ah sorry, my bad. I actually checked both my two-in-one Six Cousins book and The Rilloby Fair Mystery and got the page numbers mixed up. It is 284 pages! The Six Cousins one was around 350 pages, two books together.

I imagine the only way to compare book lengths is a word count as the various editions have different sizes of type which alters the number of words on a page and therefore the number of pages in the book

Well, let's just compare the first editions then. They appeared exactly as Enid wanted them to, I suppose.

[Ming]

Enid Blyton's Book of the Year contains 352 pages, The News Chronicles contain around 220 pages, The Twins at St. Clare's 217, The Famous Five and the Secret series are around 190 pages. The Island of Adventure has 327 pages, The Castle of Adventure 319 - so the Adventure series seem to be the longest.

All information taken from Tony's bibliographies.

[Tony Summerfield]

I think probably the fairest comparison is done using modern paperbacks. They use a fairly uniform size of print and most don't have illustrations any more. I have just checked The Island of Adventure and it has 190 pages - quite a come down!

[Philip Mannering]

Word Count:
1. Famous Five = 45,000 words or so.
2. Five Find-Outers = 40,000 words or so.
3. Adventure = 60,000 words or so.
4. Barney = 55,000 words or so.
5. Secret = 45,000 words or so.
6. Malory Towers = 45,000 words or so.

So! The Adventure series is the longest, as said by Ming. Next come the Barney series, with Famous Five, Secret and Malory Towers on a similar count. I'm surprised that the Five Find-Outers are so short - I always believed to be quite long! This just shows how great they were.

Ming, in your first post there is another wrong thing. You said that The Rilloby Fair Mystery is the longest Barney Mystery; but it isn't. The longest is The Rockingdown Mystery. It has 297 pages - about 13 more than The Rilloby Fair Mystery.

UPDATE : I checked other books of the Five Find Outers series and still found the word count to be similar. So I'm afraid Robert, that you'll just have to believe that a Famous Five is longer than a Five Find-Outer.[Update within Update: As a number of people found it hard to believe that a Famous Five is longer than a Find-Outer, I seeked to find out which way it is. I have calculated the average of the Find-Outer books, also finding out the highest and lowest word count of the series. I shall be making updates to other series shortly.

The Find-Outers series = Average: 42,000 words.
Highest word count: 48,000 words.
Lowest word count: 35,000 words.

Err, I have just found the average, highest and lowest word count of the Famous Five series. Very painful....

The Famous Five series = Average: 40,000 words.
Highest word count: 45,000 words.
Lowest word count: 36,000 words.

I am very sorry to cause the impression that this series is longer than the Find-Outers, very, very sorry as it turns out that the Find-Outers are longer after all.

Once again, I give my humble apologies.

[Rob Houghton]

I can't believe for one moment that the average Find outer's book is only 40,000 words: certainly don't believe them to be shorter than a famous Five.

The Adventure series are generally the longest books, I'd have thought, but going purely on guess-work, I would suggest that Enid's longest book would be 'Enid Blyton's circus Book' (reprinted version, 1949) which has 34 chapters on 159 very closely typed pages. There are over 400 words to each full page (actually about 445 words per full page) - roughly 62,800 words altogether, taking into account the 32 half-page illustrations and the fact that the chapters follow one after the other without page breaks.

I vote for 'The Circus Book'!

[Kitty]

I can't believe for one moment that the average Find outer's book is only 40,000 words: certainly don't believe them to be shorter than a famous Five.

Agree - they certainly seem longer books when reading them, though maybe I only say that because I prefer them to the Fives, and take my time in savouring their atmosphere. I do so wish that the Find Outers had had twenty one titles. Cannot understand why they are not the feted EB series of choice in the wider world. I would defy her harshest critics not to enjoy some of those titles. Oh well, I'm like a cracked record on this topic!

[Tony Summerfield]

I think that I have mentioned in the past that this is one of her longest books, Rob - one of my reasons for suggesting that this is likely to be adapted from her rejected adult novel (see my comments in the Book Listing under the review). The first edition actually has 224 pages, but they are large pages and a quick word count on one page was 375 words.

One thing that I can say about the book is that it has more illustrations than any other Blyton book - I started scanning them for the Book Listing, but have yet to go on as it is at least a 6 hour job!

Interestingly is is a very little known book as it has never been published in paperback.

[Rob Houghton]

I think that I have mentioned in the past that this is one of her longest books, Rob - one of my reasons for suggesting that this is likely to be adapted from her rejected adult novel (see my comments in the Book Listing under the review). The first edition actually has 224 pages, but they are large pages and a quick word count on one page was 375 words.

think I sub-consciously remembered you mentioning this was one of the longest books, Tony: so my hat's off to you!

I have both versions of the book: yes, the News Chronicle version has loads of illustrations, whereas the 1949 version has just 32.

It's one of my favourite books for the plot: quite adult as you say, with Mr Phillipino's sister running away at 17 to get married, etc. pity it's not better known.

[Belly]

Robert, Tony thanks for mentioning the Circus book. It is one I've never read. I've always been curious about the content of 'The Caravan Goes On' which I think from memory the adult book was called?

I wonder whether the Caravan Goes On was rejected because it was poor or because EB had the reputation as a children's writer and publishers etc couldn't see the bigger picture? Then again I am unsure as to when she wrote it. I have always been curious as to what that might have been about?

I think the concensus was the play Enid wrote was poor but that this was because its genre had dated and Enid wasn't up to speed with what was popular in the theatre at the time? Not sure whether it had any merit apart from that?

Not sure if there are any children's writers who have successfully written for adults and children? Thinking of Roald Dahl but that's about it off the top of my head.

Sorry to deviate a bit from 'longest book'

[Tony Summerfield]

I wonder whether the Caravan Goes On was rejected because it was poor or because EB had the reputation as a children's writer and publishers etc couldn't see the bigger picture? Then again I am unsure as to when she wrote it. I have always been curious as to what that might have been about?

She wrote The Caravan Goes On in 1931, Julia, so her reputation didn't really come in to it as it was the first full-length novel that she actually wrote that could really be said to belong to the 'adventure' genre. If you can find a copy at a reasonable price The Circus Book is a good read regardless of its possible origins.

[Belly]

Thanks, Tony.