The Teacher's Treasury/Tales Half Told

[Anita Bensoussane]

A question in the Games section about the Reading Practice book Tales Half Told (Nelson, 1926) got me thinking. It's a strange title and I was wondering whether it was a book of unfinished stories, for schoolchildren to finish off. Part 1 of Tony's Illustrated Bibliography gave me the answer - it does indeed contain "14 incomplete stories."

The Bibliography entry above that one caught my eye, for The Teacher's Treasury(1926), consisting of three volumes. I have a set of The Teacher's Treasury, which makes very interesting reading and also contains unfinished tales for children to complete. My daughter and I enjoyed writing endings for some of the stories when she was younger, and comparing our two different versions. I was surprised to read the note in the Illustrated Bibliography which says, "Enid also wrote the material for Volume 4, but this was never published." Is it known whether she managed to use that material elsewhere? I wonder why the publishers (Newnes) didn't go ahead with the fourth book?

Anita

[Viv of Ginger Pop]

I used the story about the children who decided to sweep the chimney for the English "lesson" at the Malory Towers Day at Corfe a couple of years ago.
http://www.gingerpop.co.uk/eventsreport.htm" target="_blank

I read the story, and then got the children to call out ideas about what happened next for two scenarios - a fantasy type story and a mystery/detective story, and I wrote them up on the blackboard as a storyplan.

It worked quite well, and it was fun to complete a real EB story 80 years after Enid started it!

Best wishes

Viv

[Tony Summerfield]

My rather feeble anagram for Tales Half Told, which was correctly answered, Anita, seems to have opened up a new line of discussion. As the title implies, they were just that. Enid was very much in her 'teacher mode' in the 1920s and she did something similar in Teachers World in 1924. In fact the whole of Teachers World for the 1920s is a rich source of uncollected Blyton material. Eventually I hope to get all this information into the Cave, but as a small taster here are some of the books that could have been published.

Tales of Romance:
King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table (15 chapters)
King Charlemagne and the Paladins of France (18 chapters)
Stories of Chivalry in the Fourteenth Century (9 chapters)
Tales from Spenser's Fairie Queene (7 chapters)

Perhaps some Society Booklets! (Just a quick note for those sticklers for accuracy, Teachers World is correct, it did not have an apostrophe, though almost everybody other than me puts one in!)

On your second point about The Teacher's Treasury - I have a large 180-page foolscap workbook of Enid's that I haven't mentioned in the past. In it she records the use of all material used in anthologies, where it came from and the number of words. Although it is a very detailed account, an entry on page 17 is pretty vague, but is the reason for my entry in my Illustrated Bibliography:-

For New Children's Encyclopeadia
all stuff written for V 4 T. Treasury (which was not published)
also SS Wolf & Seven Kids (S.S. Tales from Grimm)
SS Puss in Boots (one tale) (Puss in Boots S.S.)
S.S. 127 Brer Rabbit Down the Well
Brer Rabbit Raises a Dust
How Brer Rabbit Lost His Tail
Brer Rabbit Scares His Neighbour
6000 Last story in S.S. 127 not used
Also S.S. 13 Aesop's Fables
Woman's Servant
Fox without Tail
Milkmaid & Pail

Sadly as yet I have not been able to trace this book!

[Julie2owlsdene]

I too was intrigued with Tony's title for the anagram. So its been informative reading this thread.

Reminds me a bit of a book I once bought, many years back now, about the Famous Five and You. I've had a look at a few of them in the cave of books.

They sort of let you finish your own story line a bit. Seems Enid beat them all to it

[Anita Bensoussane]

In fact the whole of Teachers World for the 1920s is a rich source of uncollected Blyton material...here are some of the books that could have been published.

Tales of Romance:
King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table (15 chapters)
King Charlemagne and the Paladins of France (18 chapters)
Stories of Chivalry in the Fourteenth Century (9 chapters)
Tales from Spenser's Fairie Queene (7 chapters)

Perhaps some Society Booklets!

Interesting stuff - thanks, Tony. Looking in the Cave of Books, I see that Enid Blyton re-told the Arthurian Legends several times. I've read her The Knights of the Round Table in its Tales of Brave Adventure incarnation (Dean&Son), which also contains Tales of Robin Hood. I wonder whether Enid reused any of her Teachers World King Arthur chapters in these books?

Critics who dismiss Enid Blyton's books as undemanding and lightweight would no doubt be surprised to hear that she retold parts of Spenser's Faerie Queene!

On your second point about The Teacher's Treasury - I have a large 180-page foolscap workbook of Enid's that I haven't mentioned in the past. In it she records the use of all material used in anthologies, where it came from and the number of words. Although it is a very detailed account, an entry on page 17 is pretty vague, but is the reason for my entry in my Illustrated Bibliography:-

For New Children's Encyclopeadia
all stuff written for V 4 T. Treasury (which was not published)...

What year did she write that entry, Tony? People with an interest in children's encyclopaedias may be able to do a spot of detective work. Unless, like Volume 4 of The Teacher's Treasury, the encyclopaedia wasn't published either!

Anita

[Tony Summerfield]

What year did she write that entry, Tony? People with an interest in children's encyclopaedias may be able to do a spot of detective work. Unless, like Volume 4 of The Teacher's Treasury, the encyclopaedia wasn't published either!

Anita

Sadly it isn't that simple. Clearly this workbook was started in the 1940s, as the first 48 pages have been neatly copied from elsewhere by someone other than Enid, possibly Kenneth. Enid's first entry is in 1944 and from there on it is all in her handwriting. The best clue is that the previous page has entries for The Children's Everything Within which was published in 1939. There is however another slight snag in as much as the chronological order is not always totally accurate, implying that the information may have been gathered from more than one source.

The fact that one of the stories is underlined as not having been used means that it was definitely published, and also of course the fact that this would have been written in after the event, which means that at least everything in the book up to that point was indeed published, though it also means that some things that were published up to that point are also missing. From 1944 onwards it is fairly complete, but I haven't managed to trace everything as sometimes Enid mentions the name of an editor that she has sent something to, rather than the name of the publisher.

Plenty of detective work needed still!

[Anita Bensoussane]

Plenty of detective work needed still!

Fascinating. Sounds like a job for the Five Find-Outers and Secret Seven combined!

Anita

[Tony Summerfield]

I thought after the discussion above somebody might be interested (possibly only Anita! ) in the birth of a book. I mentioned above that the first page in this workbook to be written by Enid was page 49. The short story book is titled Once Upon a Time. As can be seen Enid chose 26 stories for this book, but only 21 were accepted and she has crossed out 5 of the longer stories. She sent it off to Mr Ewing at the National Magazine Compnay in August 1944.



On 20th Oct. 1944 she had a letter from Mr Ewing confirming this book and another one and enclosing contracts to be signed. He also enclosed a list of the order of the 21 stories that had been chosen for the book.





What is particularly interesting is that I don't think this book was ever published as I have found no trace of it and the majority of the stories remain uncollected to this day as can be seen if you check out the relevant numbers of Sunny Stories for Little Folks in the Magazine section in the Cave. A few of the stories were later used by the Nat. Mag. Co. in Enid Blyton's Good Morning Book which was published in 1949.

It is also interesting to see the first story on the list 'The Bear and the Duck'. This originally had the title 'The Golliwog and the Duck' and Enid queries this on the list. So even as far back as 1944 somebody thought that the golliwog should be changed! However this story was published in the Good Morning Book with its original title. More recent uses of the story have reverted to the Bear!

So, Fatty on the case - does this book exist?

[Moonraker]

Fascinating material, Tony; thanks for sharing it with the us. I would have thought that if it had been published, you (and probably Anita) would certainly have heard of it, or seen it. It is a mystery though, probably too hard even for the Find-Outers to solve.

Also of interest was the rather strange layout of the letter from The National Magazine - I have never seen a date displayed in this format before!

[Julie2owlsdene]

Interesting Tony. What a lot of Blyton treasured possessions you must own

Interesting to see the typed letter, typed on one of the old machines of that era, by the look of the printing. As Nigel says, funny how that date has been written though.

Thanks for posting it.

[Anita Bensoussane]

What is particularly interesting is that I don't think this book was ever published as I have found no trace of it and the majority of the stories remain uncollected to this day as can be seen if you check out the relevant numbers of Sunny Stories for Little Folks in the Magazine section in the Cave.

Very interesting. Mr. Ewing happens to mention the wartime paper shortage in his letter - perhaps because of that the publishers finally decided to produce only one book at first (Round the Clock Stories) and shelve Once Upon a Time for the time being, which never actually got published in the end. Or perhaps it did get published but had a very small print run. It sounds from the letter as if there were some doubts about the publication of that particular title ("It has been decided after all that the agreement for the latter shall be made by the National Magazine Company with you.") Mr. Ewing also says he has retained some additional stories "with a view to making up another book next year" - would that be Chimney Corner Stories?

The date on the letter does look odd. Normally the date has a line to itself, but that could result in a one-page letter taking up two pages. Maybe employees were instructed to save paper in any way possible, even if it meant printing details like the date in an unorthodox way?

Anita

[Kate Mary]

I am interested too, in the 'birth of a book' thanks for posting these fascinating documents, shame about the damage due to the rusty paper-clip.

Kate.

[Moonraker]

The date on the letter does look odd. Normally the date has a line to itself, but that could result in a one-page letter taking up two pages.

Hmm; I would have thought if the objective was to use as little paper as possible, writing the date on three lines was using more!

Tony must be livid that we are more interested in the style of the letter than the content!

[Tony Summerfield]

Mr. Ewing also says he has retained some additional stories "with a view to making up another book next year" - would that be Chimney Corner Stories?

Anita

I do also have the list of 22 stories that Hayland (?) Ewing refers to in his letter, and you are quite right, Anita, that 20 of these stories were indeed used for Chimney Corner Stories, which was published in 1946.

I am sure you are also right that paper shortage was the reason why Once Upon a Time wasn't published, this was the conclusion that I came to. What I find puzzling though, is why so many of the stories from this 'ghost' book were not also used in later books. Clearly they were not returned to Enid, as she would have certainly used them elsewhere.

Your point about the rust is a valid one, Kate, but something that I am quite used to as Enid was very fond of using both paper clips and pins and I have numerous documents which are well decorated with rust!

Regarding your final comment, Julie, yes, I do have some very nice things here, but they belong to the Society, not to me!!

[Tony Summerfield]

Tony must be livid that we are more interested in the style of the letter than the content!

Nah!!