Facsimile Famous Fives

[Jomo]

Split from 'New Faraway Tree Book!'


It’s 100 years this year since the first published Enid Blyton book and 80 years since Five on a Treasure Island. A special edition of the original, authentic un-tampered-with Famous Five series to mark those anniversaries would be more fitting [than a new Faraway Tree book by Jacqueline Wilson].

[Judith Crabb]

I agree completely Jomo. I would love to see all twenty-one 'Fives', true facsimiles of each first edition with the original first edition dust-jackets, no changes and the only addition being a note on the verso of each title page giving the new publishing details. I dream of a choice - for the less affluent titles could be bought singly, for the well-heeled or those who prefer books to food, a splendid boxed set. I'd be happy with baked beans for a year if I could purchase true facsimiles of the first eight titles with Soper's original dust-jackets. If only....

[Jomo]

How about we harangue Hachette to do a ‘folio society’ kind of release of the original editions. I would pay those kinds of prices too. It actually wouldn’t take much to get all the 21 books printed and bound properly. I worked in the graphic arts and printing industry for years - with the technology available now, facsimile editions would be an absolute doddle.

(Nix to the baked beans though. Ugh! )

[pete9012S]

Hi Jomo, don't know if you know about the Treasure Island facsimile?

I managed to purchase one a while back:



Facsimile 1st edition - Five on a Treasure Island
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=8657&p=382303&hilit ... le#p382303

[Jomo]

Well, if they can do it with one, they can do it with 21! And this year would be the right time to do it! Let’s start nagging Hachette.

[Judith Crabb]

Yes Jomo, I understand the allure of Folio publications - in fact next to my First Edition I have the Folio edition of Rosemary Sutcliff's 'The Eagle of the Ninth' and I think they did some other Sutcliff's as well but they are not facsimiles.
The point about a true facsimile is that it is the first edition unchanged in text, illustration and format so that you could pretend that you were back in the year of its publication buying a brand new copy.
While Pete's copy is very nice and I wouldn't hesitate to buy one (as an example of a new and interesting edition), it is a hybrid (the jacket gives it away). I think Tony goes into some detail about it somewhere.

[pete9012S]

Yes Judith. Here's a bit:

It annoyed me that a so called 'facsimile' of the 1st edition should use a back cover from a late reprint. They also couldn't resist playing with the flaps so it is simply the spine and the front that are actually correct. As we have discussed elsewhere even the text was taken from the reset 1956 edition. At least it is better than the Centenary editions which were also announced as facsimiles and bore little resemblance to the originals as some of them even had the wrong cover picture!

[Jomo]

Yes Judith, I was thinking about a true facsimile - and it honestly wouldn’t be hard to do - high quality scans of first editions could be cleaned up and printed on a high quality offset press. If necessary new typesetting would exactly reproduce the original font and layout - all just really basic stuff for someone who knows how to drive modern page layout software. (I haven’t used Pagemaker or Quark Express for over 20 years, but even then the software had become so sophisticated that it would have been easy to create a facsimile)
I would however, improve the quality of the paper, make it finer surface, a nice weight, dimensionally stable, acid free archive quality.
The red boards would get similar treatment and the dust jacket would be invincible! But it would in every respect look and feel like an original first edition, except that it must have a note on the copyright page saying it is a facsimile, date 2022.

[pete9012S]

I'm with you all the way on this Jomo - but I doubt it will happen in my lifetime.

Instead I collect 2nd or very early edition Famous Fives - as close to the original publication date as possible.
I also do not buy any of the later edition Brockhampton red boarded Fives - even if they have dustjackets as the colour illustrations have been replaced my black and white ones - the endpapers are black and white and some illustrations have even been removed (Smugglers Top).

Regards

Pete
Saying that I did win twenty 1960's Hodder and 5 Brockhampton red boarded Five with dustjackets for about £8 a few years ago - better than nothing, and certainly better than the very latest butchered editions!

These twenty books cost £8.60 plus £2.95 for delivery.
Total: £11.50

[Katharine]

Oh that would be lovely, but sadly I suspect it's something that we can only dream about.

Probably too many copyright issues, and I suppose there's probably a limited market for people who would actually buy it. Serious collectors probably wouldn't touch it with a barge pole, and I would imagine that the 'PC' brigade would be up in arms at all the use of obsolete words such as galoshes, gay etc etc despite them being used in their original context.

[pete9012S]

Yes, I agree about the PC aspect Katharine. That's why I trawl for early editions - not that I really need any more Famous Five books!!!!

[Katharine]

Pete, if you are like me, there's always room for 'one more' book, especially if it's an Enid Blyton.

[pete9012S]

Yes! I'm so enjoying the Holiday Books Katharine. I can't imagine how exciting it must have been to have actually received on in the 1950's as a child.

I'm reading the 7th one at the moment - it's absolutely fantastic - (and totally untampered with!)

[Katharine]

Pete, I love the Holiday Books. Partly just because they are great books, but also because they bring back a great memory:

I was out for a day trip with my parents and my two eldest children, it was at least 20 years ago, and I went into a great second hand book shop. There on a high shelf were a couple of the holiday books. I'd never seen them before, and it awoke my interest in Enid Blyton again. The rest they say is history, and I haven't stopped collecting her books since.

[Jomo]

These twenty books cost £8.60 plus £2.95 for delivery.
Total: £11.50

I’m hoping to stumble on something like that! Not impossible…

AS for a facsimile set - it doesn’t hurt to try. If Hachette (who have admitted that they’ve made a hash of it by taking a hatchet to the Famous Five) thought there were significant sales in it they would do it. The Blyton facebook groups are full of older readers complaining about various modern editions and avowing that they only want the original editions. I reckon there’s a market for facsimile editions.