Via Garth, this fascinating article comparing Enid Blyton and J. K. Rowling. Here’s the paragraph that made me fall over:
Enid Blyton wrote nearly 800 books over a 40-year career, many of them quite slim, as well as close to 5,000 short stories. She sold 200 million books in her lifetime, with few translations until the 1960s and 1970s, and has sold some 400 million altogether. About half of her titles are still in print, and they still sell 11 million copies a year, including a million for the Famous Five series and three million Noddy books.
Wow! Rowling thus far has sold 325 million. So she will overtake Blyton (within the year I reckon) selling fewer titles (7 as opposed to 800) much faster. For the sake of Rowling’s health and sanity I hope she doesn’t up her output: Blyton wrote 10,000 words a day. The most I’m able to consistently write a day is about 1,500. I have written 10,000 in a day but it was during the sprint to finish my PhD thesis and I was not a sane or happy bunny rabbit doing it.
Enid Blyton wrote the first chapter book I ever read by myself: The Magic Faraway Tree. I adored it so much that she was also the author of the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh and etc. chapter books I read on my own. She was my first author crush. After the Faraway books I fell for the Naughtiest Girl books. Only to be disappointed when she learns her lesson and becomes good—goodness? Bleah! Why was she no longer throwing chalk?!
Then I became so deeply obsessed with the Mallory Towers and St. Clare’s books that I begged my parents to send me to boarding school. When they refused I’d bully my sister into having midnight feasts with me. I’m not sure if they ever actually happened at midnight, but. I was very little when I was devouring her books.
I also read Famous Five and Secret Seven but I never liked them as much as the others. Julian was a bully, Dick was a whinger, Anne was unspeakably wet, and George wasn’t nearly tough enough. I kept waiting for her to murder Dick and Anne. Never happened. I guess Timmy the Dog was okay. And the Secret Seven weren’t even memorable enough to rail against.
I’ve never gone back and read her books again. Frankly, I’m too frightened of what I might find. She was one of the strongest influences on my becoming a writer and in particular in becoming a genre writer. My love for the Faraway Tree books led to my being exposed to all sorts of other wondrous books like the Susan Cooper’s, The Hobbit, Alice in Wonderland and Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea trilogy. I didn’t read these books just once but over and over again.
Blyton taught me how to read, how to tell a story, about drama and suspense and action, how girls are better than boys, glasses make you ugly, and how dobbing your mates into the authorities is always best. Some of those lessons stuck a wee bit better than the others . . .
I know Enid Blyton had little impact in the USA, but did you yanquis have comparable authors you fell for as a first-time reader? And non-USians, come share the Blyton love! Testify!
Oh yes, i read so many enid blyton books when i was a kid and i think the faraway tree series and the mallory towers ones were the best. although having spent some time in a real boarding school i can attest that it is nothing like mallory towers at all, which was very disappointing. i also really like the cherry tree farm ones, which made me want to go live on a farm for the rest of my life, but i guess in australia its either drought or flooding so maybe a farm here is not the best idea…
I was a big Blyton reader, starting from when i was about 4 years old, i think. The Faraway tree, the wishing chair, mr meddle, mr twiddle, mr pinkwhistle (my god, those names!! those must have been more innocent times), binkle and flip… i was not so keen on the famous five and their ilk. maybe not fantastical enough? though heaven knows they did live in a nice middle-class fantasy land, where all criminals were common people or gypsies.
enid blyton was author non grata in our house, which I don’t think I really minded even at the time. I absolutely adored the laura Ingalls books (little house on the prairie etc). were they big in australia? so i never dreamed about going to any kind of school, instead i desperately wanted to try maple sugar candy and sour-dough biscuits (I still don’t know what they are. are they nice?) and ride a wild pony like the indians. i loved how the books grow up as laura grows up – i guess that’s one of the things harry potter fans like so much about the HP series. but my all-time favourite reading was fairytales. any and all. still is, actually…
Enid Blyton. Dear God. The fifth? – I think – Famous Five book was the first book that wasn’t mostly pictures I can remember reading by myself. I was maybe six at the time, but damn, for the next two or three years did she make an impression. Although looking back, I have to agree with your assessment of F5 and S7 both.
Of course, when I was eight I discovered a fantasy novel at the bottom of a bargain bin, and never looked back. I think it was a Raymond Feist book, but that led me to bigger and better things.
But Blyton was an incredible influence on my six-year-old self.
*blinks* 10 thousand words a day?! I can’t even imagine such a feat. Have never read Enid Blyton. My favourite reads growing up were fairy tales and Sword & Sorcery comic books. 🙂
Oh yes, Blyton. I still have a fondness for the children-at-the-seaside kind of story, which I link directly to her.
And Liliya: yes, maple sugar candy is very nice indeed (though extremely sweet).
I never read Enid Blyton (nor did I read Laura Ingalls Wilder, who I think was probably the most popular for American girls), but I was obsessed with JD Fitzgerald’s “Great Brain” books. I also read everything by LM Montgomery (most famous for her Anne of Green Gables books). And of course, there’s always Nancy Drew and etc.
Ooh! How can I forget Ramona Quimby and all the other amazing books by Beverly Cleary?
And of course, one of the first chapter books i ever read was B is for Betsy and all the followups, by Caroline Haywood. My mom read those when she was a little girl, too…
I remember two series I read voraciously as a kid: Walter Farley’s “The Black Stallion” books (and the related, but with an, in retrospect, quite bizarre science fiction twist, “Island Stallion” books)–and, much more importantly, Arthur Ransome’s “Swallows and Amazons” books. Our local library in the small Saskatchewan prairie city of Weyburn had a few of Ransome’s books: I ordered the rest, using my meagre allowance, direct from Jonathan Cape in England through the closest thing we had to a local bookstore, Kempton’s, which mostly sold stationery and that sort of thing. I still have the set and they still reward re-reading: I’m looking forward to sharing them with my six-year-old when she’s a year or two older.
I did read Enid Blyton’s Famous Five series, but under rather unusual circumstances. When I was 18 I spent a month staying with a Scottish family in Edinburgh. I think I’d finished the books I’d brought with me on the interminable trip from the U.S. to London and then by train to Edinburgh, and I was desperate enough to read anything. The family had dozens of Enid Blyton books, an I devoured them like popcorn, one or two a day.
I can’t remember a thing about them.
I honestly can’t remember which chapter book i read by myself first, but the laura ingalls wilder books were a big part of my early reading experience. I started reading them when I was about 5. i was also a huge fan of beverly cleary’s ramona books.
somehow, I didn’t read the anne of green gables series until i was in jr. high. i don’t know how i missed them!
even after I knew how to read myself, i loved when my mom read to all of us kids at night. she had a great reading voice and did a lot with inflection,etc. of all the books she read to us, the whipping boy stands out in my mind the most. not sure why, though.
also, since i loved reading so much, people always gave me books for my birthday and christmas, etc. i loved getting the books, don’t get me wrong, but at the same time, I’d see my sister receive really beautiful china dolls and felt like I got ripped off a little bit.
of course, i was totally wrong. she wasn’t actually allowed to play with those dolls. and now that we’re grown up, those dolls are all in boxes in the attic. but I still have some of those books. they’ve been read over and over through the years and I’ve passed them on to my siblings and friends.
sometimes I wish I could go back in time and smack that ungreatful younger version of myself. anyone else ever feel like that?
The Treasure Hunters and The Rockingdown Mystery were my first when I was sevenish, followed by umpteen St. Clare’s and Mallory Towers and the [X] of Adventure books. But then, I’m Canadian of Brit stock, so that might be why I knew about them and had access to them. I had one or two Noddy books when I was younger, too, although they did nothing for me.
I never read any Enid Blyton, which is odd, because I got a lot of books from my British cousins — including the Moomintroll books, which I read long before they became popular in the U.S. I love those books!!!
I remember being fond of L. Frank Baum, not just the Oz books, but his other children’s fantasies. (Poor guy, he didn’t want to keep writing Oz books, but his readers demanded it, and finally he just brought most of the characters from his other books to Oz, with the result that the later books all contain vast parades of cameos.)
I was obsessed with Alice in Wonderland for a number of years, read it so many times I had whole chapters virtually memorized. I can still recite Jabberwocky and The Walrus and the Carpenter pretty accurately.
When I got a bit older (12-ish) I was really into Zilpha Keatly Snyder, Sally Watson, and Sylvia Louise Engdahl. And yes, Laura Ingalls Wilder (which kind of rhymes with Zilpha Keatly Snyder, now that I come to think of it). I also loved the John Christopher books about the Tripods — I remember having imaginary conversations with the characters, in which I took them to task for not recruiting any girls into the resistance movement.
As far as really early books, though, nothing beats Just So Stories, which my dad read to me when I was quite tiny. I still hear those stories in his voice when I read them. This didn’t translate into a general love for Kipling, though. I later read The Jungle Book, but never finished Kim and I never read Captains Courageous or any of the other obvious books.
And now my own little Alice is demanding that I read to her: “Read Ham, read Ham!” Is Dr. Seuss as popular in Australia or Britain as it is here?
although i’m a native nyer, i did read enid blyton.
i especially remember 4th form at mallory towers, in which a vain, beautiful new girl with eyes set too close together turns out to be a thief and a liar but then is forgiven when she risks her life for a silly little admirer. (oh, writers, beware those eyes set too close together! aren’t they always a dead giveaway. ) anyway, enid blyton was part of a whole english children’s genre that was pure escapism for me. it also included the arthur ransome books.
nothing could be more exotic to a little jewish girl in nyc!
harry potter owes a lot to enid blyton in my opinion. i mean, apart from the magic, there’s all that glorious english boarding school stuff.
justine, i was amazed when i found out you also love georgette heyer’s regency romances. i don’t know anyone but my sister who truly appreciates her work. we discovered them the summer i was nine, in an airport, having failed to persuade my parents to buy me a paperback with a much racier cover. I realized recently that the thing about gh is, she actually writes 40s movies in 17th & 18th c. costume. especially the plots. “sparks fly when the romantic leads cross paths but in the end…”
Ariel Cooke: You know, I’m always amazed to meet people who haven’t read Georgette Heyer. Did you see the previous Heyer discussions?
Just your mentioning her name makes me want to start re-reading. Yum! Plus I’ll have to take a close look to check out your 40s movies hypothesis . . .
Oh, and the boarding school books seemed pretty bloody exotic to me growing up in Sydney, too. The books are so old I imagine they’re fairly strange to read in the UK now. I’ve never met anyone British who says “lashings”. At least not in the context Blyton does. “We’ll have lashings of cream with our scones!”
noddy! i loved noddy when i was a kid. my grandmother had tons of noddy books, and i’d go next door all the time so she could read them to me. she also had the just so stories on a record, and she’d play it for me and my little brother. i was also obsessed with the berenstein bears books.
when i was a little older, i liked the laura ingalls wilder books, roald dahl (matilda and james and the giant peach were my favorites)and all the boxcar children books.
then i discovered animorphs at the public library. it was my first exposure to science fiction. 😉 after that, i pretty much refused to read anything that didn’t have aliens or spaceships involved. i read those star wars kids books, and young jedi knights, and bruce coville’s my teacher flunked the planet series.
Oh, I loved the Cherry Tree Farm/Willow Farm series. With Tammylan the Wild Man and all the squirrels and lambs and fresh milk.
I learnt everything I know about farming from those books. Which, admittedly, is not very much.
Justine, i know this is OT but thanks so much for the link back to the Georgette Heyer discussions. Very exciting to find all these smart people talking about her! My sister and I always officially loved Devil’s Cub best because it actually has an abduction in it. (All the others just talk about ’em.)
Have you seen The Private World of Georgette Heyer? It’s her biography and has photos of her. The book is great but how it was sent to me is even better: sewn into a muslin package and sent by a friend who had found it in a used book store in India where he was traveling.
I never heard of Enid Blyton until I was an adult reading J.K. Rowling *ducks* but my big influential authors when I was a kid were Judy Blume, Beverly Cleary, Ruth Chew, and E.L. Konigsburg. Sometimes I feel like the only American who’s never read anything by Laura Ingalls Wilder nor has a desire to. I also read everything I could find in the Twilight (not that one!!!!) series, which was a series of supernatural/horror books. Oddly, I’ve always loved horror but never got into fantasy.
Looking back at my three biggest influences (Blume, Cleary, Konigsburg; Ruth Chew was more someone I read for fun and adventure), I think the one thing they all have in common is something I greatly admire in J.K. Rowling’s writing, and that is their ability to tap into the way people feel and convey it to the reader. They created characters that I wanted to be as well as imitate. And they all must be doing something right, because a generation later their books are still being read.
My fave series as a littlun: Encyclopedia Brown! Ramona Quimby Age 8! L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables series, and her Emily of New Moon series, too. Gawd I wanted to go to Prince Edward Island so bad. Still do, actually. Also loved Madeline L’Engle’s books and Susan Cooper’s Greenwich series. And anything by Scott O’Dell. And…
LET ME SECOND THE VOTE OF THE COMMENTER ABOVE: J. D. FITZGERALD’S “GREAT BRAIN” BOOKS WERE MY CONSTANT COMPANIONS IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL. (I WAS PLEASED TO FIND OUT, WHEN I PASSED THEM ALONG TO MY DAUGHTER, THAT THEY WORK AS WELL FOR A GIRL IN THE 2000’S AS THEY DID FOR A BOY IN THE 1970’S.) I ALSO READ A LOT OF ENCYCLOPEDIA BROWN BOOKS (WHICH ALSO HOLD UP NOW FOR MY DAUGHTER AND OTHER KIDS I KNOW), PLUS THE HARDY BOYS (WHICH DON’T). BY JUNIOR HIGH, I READ TOLKEIN OBSESSIVELY, AS WELL AS AGATHA CHRISTIE. ONE SERIES THAT NOT AS MANY FOLKS MY AGE SEEM TO HAVE READ: FREDDY THE PIG, BY WALTER BROOKS. MY FATHER PASSED ALONG HIS BELOVED COPIES TO ME, AND I STILL READ THEM TO MY KIDS. FUNNY THING IS, MY *WIFE*’S FATHER HAS A COMPLETE SET OF FREDDY BOOKS FROM HIS CHILDHOOD – HE AND MY FATHER ARE THE ONLY TWO FOLKS I’VE EVER HEARD RAVE ABOUT THEM. (MY MOTHER TOOK THIS AS A “SIGN” THAT MY WIFE AND I WERE MEANT FOR EACH OTHER.)
A NOTE ON ENID BLYTON: WHILE I WAS ATTENDING GRADUATE SCHOOL IN SCOTLAND, I WAS CHATTING WITH A WELSHWOMAN AT A COCKTAIL PARTY WHEN SHE MENTIONED ENID BLYTON IN PASSING. (IT MAY HAVE HAD SOMETHING TO DO WITH HOW QUICKLY THE WOMAN WAS WRITING ON HER DISSERTATION AT THE TIME.) MY BLANK LOOK THREW HER: I HAD NEVER HEARD OF BLYTON, WHILE SHE OF COURSE HAD GROWN UP READING HER.
Yes, I was a massive Enid Blyton fan as a kid. (You couldn’t avoid the books when growing up in the UK in the 70’s, that’s fer sure.)
About eight years ago I started to collect some of the books I’d enjoyed as a kid, so my own children could have a go at them. A thousand kids books later …
Anyway, the Famous Five collecting turned into an obsession to own a whole set of the original hardbacks I’d read as a kid rather than the paperbacks with their cheesy photos from the TV series. Then I had to get the paperback versions as reading copies for my kids 😉
One of the things I really like about older books (and UK TV shows like The Professionals, The Sweeney and Minder) is that they’re a time capsule to the era of my childhood. Cars, buildings, people are all as I remember them, and while the books and shows can be non-PC at times, they’re still great nostalgia.
By the way, I also have all the Ransome books and whole shelves crammed with Jennings & Derbishire, Just William, Billy Bunter et al.
Paddington Bear too, and it’s amazing how advanced the language is in Paddington when you compare it with modern ‘little kids’ books. Always love to see words like ‘convalescence’, ‘proceedings’, ‘intolerable’, ‘reluctantly’, ‘imposing’, ‘circumstances’, ‘apparatus’ and ‘commendable’ sprinkled in the text, and I found those on half a dozen pages chosen at random. The books are hilarious, too – well worth a read.
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