Enid Blyton

At 71 years old, Enid Blyton has this physical status:

Enid Mary Blyton (11 August 1897 – 28 November 1968) was an English children's writer whose books have been among the world's best-sellers since the 1930s, with more than 600 million copies sold.

Blyton's books are still hugely popular, and they have been translated into 90 languages.

She wrote on a variety of topics, including education, natural history, fantasy, intrigue, and biblical stories, and is best known today for her Noddy, Famous Five, and Secret Seven books. Child Whispers, a 24-page collection of poems, was her first book, published in 1922.

Following the commercial success of her debut novels, Adventures of the Wishing-Chair (1937) and The Enchanted Wood (1939), Blyton went on to create a literary empire, often publishing fifty books a year in lieu of her regular magazine and newspaper contributions.

Her writing was unplanned and sprang heavily from her unconscious mind: she wrote her stories as they occurred before her.

Blyton's sheer volume of her work and the speed with which it was produced sparked rumors that the city had a corpse of ghost writers, a charge she vehemently denied. Blyton's writing and the book's topics, especially the Noddy series, became increasingly controversial among literary critics, educators, and parents from the 1950s to the present, making her work increasingly controversial among literary critics, researchers, teachers, and parents.

Those libraries and schools had outlawed her works, which the BBC had refused to air from 1930s to 1950s because they were perceived as lacking literary authority.

Her books have been criticized as elitist, sexist, racial, xenophobic, and at odds with the more liberal environment that has arisen in postwar Britain, but they have continued to be best-sellers since her death in 1968. Blyton felt she had a moral responsibility to her followers, so she encouraged them to support worthy causes.

She encouraged and encouraged animal and paediatric charities, particularly because she founded or sponsored them.

Helena Bonham Carter in the title role and first broadcast in the United Kingdom on BBC Four in 2009.

Several adaptations of her books have also been published for stage, film, and television.

Early life and education

Enid Blyton was born in East Dulwich, United Kingdom, the eldest of three children of Thomas Carey Blyton (1870–1920), a cutlery salesman (recorded in the 1911 census as the eldest of three children, but not in [in] women's suits, skirts, etc.) Theresa Mary (née Harrison, 1874-1950) and his husband Theresa Mary (née Harrison; 1874-1955). Hanly (1899–1983) and Carey (1902–1976) were born in Enid's younger brothers, who were born in Beckenham after the family's family moved to a semi-detached house and then a village in Kent. Enid died from whooping cough a few months after her birth, but her father, who she adored, helped her return to health. Thomas Blyton ignited Enid's interest in nature; she wrote that he "loved flowers and birds and wild animals" and knew more about them than anyone else; He also expressed an interest in gardening, painting, music, literature, and theatre, and the pair went on nature walks, much to Enid's mother, who expressed no interest in her daughter's pursuits. Enid was devastated when he left the family shortly after her 13th birthday to live with another woman. Enid and her mother had no strong relationship, and she did not attend either of her parents' funerals.

Blyton attended St Christopher's School in Beckenham, where she loved physical fitness and became the first female captain of lacrosse. She was not keen on any of the academic fields, but she excelled in writing and, in 1911, she competed in Arthur Mee's children's poetry competition. Mee promised to print her verses, assuaging her to produce more. The mother of Blyton regarded her writing as a "waste of time and money," but Mabel Attenborough, the aunt of school friend Mary Potter, encouraged her to persist.

Blyton's father taught her to play the piano, a skill she mastered well enough for him to believe she could follow in his sister's footsteps and become a professional musician. Blyton considered enrolling in the Guildhall School of Music, but decided she was more suited to being a writer. She moved out of the family home to live with her friend Mary Attenborough before joining George and Emily Hunt at Seckford Hall, Suffolk, after finishing school in 1915. Seckford Hall, with its allegedly haunted room and a mysterious passageway, inspired her later writing. Blyton's Woodbridge Congregational Church found Ida Hunt, a teacher at Ipswich High School, and suggested she study there as a tutor. Blyton was introduced to the children at the kindergarten school and, after realizing her inherent love for them, she enrolled in a National Froebel Union teacher training course at the school in September 1916. By this time, she had practically cut off all contact with her family.

On several occasions, publishers rejected Blyton's manuscripts, but it made her more determined to succeed, saying, "It's partly the struggle that makes you so much; it gives you confidence, character, and self-reliance" – all things that help in any field or trade, but especially in writing." In March 1916, her first poems were published in Nash's Magazine in March. She completed her teacher training program in December 1918 and gained a teaching job at Bickley Park School, a small, independent school for boys in Bickley, Kent, the following month. Blyton received a teaching certificate two months later; first class in botany, geography, research, and classroom instruction; and second class in literature and elementary mathematics. In 1920, she moved to Southernhay, Hook Road Surbiton, as nursery governes to architect Horace Thompson and his four sons' four sons, as well as his mother Gertrude, with whom Blyton spent four happy years. With a shortage of local schools, neighboring children pleaded guilty soon, and a small school was established at the house.

Personal life

Big Hugh Alexander Pollock, DSO (1888–1971) at Bromley Register Office, August 28, 1924, Blyton married her family without involving her family. They married within days of his first marriage, one of whom had two sons, with the other one of whom was already deceased. Pollock was editor of the book section of Blyton's regular publisher, George Newnes. It was he who asked her to write a book about animals, which resulted in The Zoo Book being published in the month before their marriage. They lived in a Chelsea flat until 1926 and then to Old Thatch in Bourne End (called Peterswood in her books). Gillian, Blyton's first child, was born on July 15, 1931, and she gave birth to Imogen, her second daughter, in 1934, on October 27.

Following a competition in her magazine, she and her family relocated to a house in Beaconsfield, named Green Hedges by Blyton's readers in 1938. Pollock had become a feared alcoholic by the mid-1930s, withdrawing more from public life, possibly starting with his meetings with Winston Churchill, which may have resurgent the horror Pollock suffered during World War I. He became involved in World War II and later recalled Ida Crowe, a young writer 19 years old, who had first encountered him years ago. He made her an appointment to join him as secretary in his posting to a Home Guard training center in Denbies, a Gothic mansion in Surrey owned by Lord Ashcombe, and they began a romantic relationship. Blyton's marriage to Pollock was plagued for years, and Crowe's book details, she had a string of relationships, including a lesbian friendship with one of the children's nannies. Kenneth Fraser Darrell Waters, a London surgeon with whom she began a serious relationship in 1941, was introduced to Blyton. Pollock found the connection and threatened to start divorce proceedings. Blyton's inability to file for divorce against Pollock was ultimately decided that rather than risking the revelation of her adultery would damage her public image. Blyton said in Crowe's book that if he admitted to infidelity, she would allow them parent access to their children; but after the divorce, Blyton said he was not allowed to be published, and he was still looking for jobs in publishing. Pollock, who had married Crowe on October 26, 1943, later became addicted to alcohol and was forced to file for bankruptcy in 1950.

On the 20th of October 1943, Blyton and Darrell Waters married at the City of Westminster Register Office. She changed the surname of her daughters to Darrell Waters and opened her new role as a happily married and devoted doctor's wife. After discovering she was pregnant in the spring of 1945, Blyton miscarried five months later after crashing from a ladder. The baby was expected to be Darrell Waters' first child and son's for which they both longed.

She loved tennis but she preferred naked nude tennis "a common sport in those days among the more louche members of the middle classes."

By 1957, Blyton's health began to deteriorate, when she began to feel tired and breathless after a round of golf, and, by 1960, she was showing signs of dementia. George Greenfield, her agent's, recalled that it was "unthinkable" for the "most popular and lucrative of children's writers" with her immense enthusiasm and computer-like memory to be losing her mind and suffering from Alzheimer's disease in her mid-60s. Worsening Blyton's health was during his lifetime; he suffered from severe arthritis in his neck and hips, deafness, and became increasingly ill-tempered and erratic until his death on September 15, 1967.

In a BBC film called Enid, which aired in the United Kingdom on BBC Four on Sunday, the life of Blyton was chronicled. Helena Bonham Carter, who appeared in Blyton, described the role as "a complete workaholic, an achievement junkie, and an extremely canny businesswoman" who "knew how to market herself, right down to the iconic logo.

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Early writing career

In 1920, Blyton moved to Chessington and began writing in her spare time. With her essay "On the Popular Fallacy That the Pure All Things Are Pure", she returned to Westminster Review writing competition the following year. The Londoner, Home Weekly, and The Bystander began to express an interest in her short stories and poems.

Child Whispers, Blyton's first book, was published in 1922 as a 24-page collection of poems. Phyllis Chase, Enid's schoolmate, collaborated on several of her early drawings. Also in that year, Blyton began writing in annuals for Cassell and George Newnes, and her first piece of writing, "Perpetonel and his Pot of Glue," was accepted for publication in Teachers' World. Her poems also boosted her success in 1923, when they appeared alongside Rudyard Kipling's Walter de la Mare's and G. K. Chesterton in a special issue of Teachers' World. In the 1920s and 1930s, Blyton's educational books were influential, with her most notable being the three-volume Modern Teaching in the Infant School (1932).

Blyton published Real Fairies, a series of thirty-three poems written specifically for the book, with the exception of "Pretending" which had appeared in Punch magazine earlier. The Enid Blyton Book of Fairies, illustrated by Horace J. Knowles, was published in 1926 in The Book of Brownies. Several books of plays appeared in 1927, including A Book of Little Plays and The Play's the Thing with illustrator Alfred Bestall.

Blyton's 1930s fiction, as well as those of ancient Greece and Rome, piqued interest in writing stories about various myths; The Knights of the Round Table, Tales of Ancient Greece, and Tales of Robin Hood were all published in 1930. Blyton retold 16 well-known ancient Greek myths but used Latin rather than the Greek names of deities and invented conversations between characters in Tales of Ancient Greece. In 1934, Odysseus, Tales of the Ancient Greeks and Persians, and Tales of the Romans followed.

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