Rockingdown Mystery - mystery of the strange illustration!

[Lucky Star]

You'll have to excuse the bad image. It's been taken as a photo with my phone from my 1958 copy of the book but this is the image that Rob was talking about.

[pete9012S]

Brilliant John.

It's been driving me nuts, this missing pic.
I was uploading this before I realised you had found the pic - mine was in a 1953 edition of the book I found in my library after returning home tonight:

[pete9012S]

So now here's Rob's original post - hopefully with the missing pic in its rightful place:

You can now see it in its rightful place!!
https://www.enidblytonsociety.co.uk/boo ... ustrations

Not sure where to post this - is there an official 'Rockingdown Mystery' thread, or Barney Mystery thread? Anyway - its a bit of a mystery in itself!

Maybe someone has spotted this before and surely I can't be the first, lol - but I was taking photos of various pages of a copy of The Rockingdown Mystery in order to sell it on eBay, and I came across a strange illustration. It's not in The Cave - and might not even be drawn by Gilbert Dunlop! (hard to tell!).

The edition is the 1958 impression, with 'new' cover design but not a wrap-around cover (its white with other books advertised on the back cover). The chapter is Chapter 24.

Usually, in editions where an illustration starts every chapter, this is the illustration for Chapter 24 - as seen in The Cave -



But THIS is what's shown in the 1958 edition :





I've NEVER seen this illustration in any other edition of The Rockingdown Mystery. Has anyone else? Does it appear in any other editions or was this a one-off? Is it even by Gilbert Dunlop?!

[Anita Bensoussane]

It's interesting to see the picture, John (Lucky Star) and Pete. I wonder if there are any more illustrations that appeared only in later editions of the other five Barney titles. My copies are Armada paperbacks and, far from containing any extras, they sadly have a lot of pictures missing.

[Bertie]

Yes, I have the Armada paperbacks as well, Anita. So it was interesting to see those photos as neither are in my version.
I'm going to have to buy new copies of both Rockingdown and Rilloby Fair as I've had them so long, and read them so often, that they're very much the worse for wear nowadays. The same happened in recent years with a few of my Granada Find-Outers books.

[Irene Malory Towers]

Thanks (Lucky Star) so much for posting that illustration. I am thick here but is it possible to post an illustration from your phone then even if it is not in the cave. I like both illustrations very much although I note that Mr King appears to have lost weight !! in the illustration. The first one is more atmospheric but the 2nd gives a real sense of movement although Snubby in the background looks about 5 ! Are they both done by Gilbert Dunlop then ?

You can now see it in its rightful place!!

[Moonraker]

When we emailed Keith about it, he asked Tony and me to upload images directly to the forum server to see what would happen. We did so, and he said the space was filling up too quickly.

Yes, I had to disable this feature on one of my forums for exactly the same reason.

[Boatbuilder]

That would seem to indicate that you don't have unlimited storage and bandwidth on the server, as I have on mine. Images uploaded on my forum currently total in excess of 16,000 using 4-gigabytes of space.

[Moonraker]

I have to buy extra storage, which I am not prepared to do when pictures can be uploaded via a hosting site such as Imgur. The feature can still be used, but every new image deletes a previous one.

[Anita Bensoussane]

No, we don't have unlimited storage and bandwidth - and the forums are only one part of a large website containing masses of organised information and images.

[Lucky Star]

Thanks (Lucky Star) so much for posting that illustration. I am thick here but is it possible to post an illustration from your phone then even if it is not in the cave.

No I took the pic on my phone, uploaded it to my PC then used IMGUR hosting site to post it on this thread. A bit laborious but I got there eventually.

[Irene Malory Towers]

Thanks for the explanation. I like both illustrations. I don't want to be something ist !! ie racist/sexist/ etc etc.

[Moonraker]

I don't want to be something ist !! ie racist/sexist/ etc etc.

I was a Methodist once.

[Irene Malory Towers]

oops - OK that is allowed. So many bad things seem to end in ist, ageist, racist, sexist but I guess Methodist is fine,

[Boatbuilder]

And loads more that aren't bad.

https://www.morewords.com/ends-with/ist