Blyton and the librarians

I was idly reflecting recently about writers who have a formative impact on our young minds. I wondered if - for those of us in the Commonwealth - anyone had tried to establish just how much that impact a prolific writer such as Enid Blyton had created.

Last year I read a number of books about Blyton. My trigger for this had been some media-reported librarian grumping about Enid Blyton being a like sugar to teeth: poorly written; racist; elitist; colonialist; sexist; and everything-ist (Rudd, 2004). My reaction was to do some background reading, digging into the third party literature which exists on Blyton (Baverstock, 1997; Blyton, 1952; Greenfield, 1998; Hunt, 1995; Leeson, 1985; McLaren, 2007; Mullan, 1987; Ray, 1982; Rudd, 2004; Smallwood, 1989; Stoney, 1974; Tucker, 1975), as well as a few theses (Clark, 2010; Coetzee, 2010; Rudd, 1997).

What surprised me in my exploring was how private Blyton had been about her personal life, and that there had only been two 'official' biographies written (Blyton, 1952; Stoney, 1974). I was also surprised to learn that she had had two children - Gillian (happy) and Imogen (not) (Brandreth, 2002, 2019) - and that each had also written a form of biography (Baverstock, 1997; Smallwood, 1989).

What was even more surprising was to realise that Blyton was a trained primary school teacher, who wrote to create her own resources. And that - although her writing fed into needed teaching materials - she had long been entering writing competitions prior to becoming a trained teacher. It appeared that her father, Thomas Blyton, encouraged her learning, wanting her to become a pianist. Her yen was for writing. Her mother, Theresa Blyton (neé Harrison) thought that education of women was a waste of time: to be a wife and mother, Enid needed to learn household management. Theresa may have provided the driving force in Enid deciding to teach (Greenfield, 1998; Stoney, 1974). Enid could legitimately escape the maternal home (Greenfield, 1998; Stoney, 1974), would have a legitimate role, and would not be expected to household chores, as a teacher; and she could write on the side. Enid was a strong-willed and strategic thinker; enough to bring Thomas around to embracing her choice, and paying for her teacher training (Blyton, 1952; Greenfield, 1998; Stoney, 1974).

Her escape from 1916 to 1918 into two years of teacher training also led to publication. Her first poems were published in 1917 (Greenfield, 1998); by 2022 her first book was published; in 1923, two books. By 1924 she was picked up by George Newnes, and she was away (Greenfield, 1998). She caught her first husband, Hugh Pollock, at Newnes, so stopped teaching, and began writing full time (Greenfield, 1998; Stoney, 1974). Married women, after all, did not 'work' (writing obviously not being work). Her earnings rose from £300 in 1922 to £1200 in 1925 (Greenfield, 1998).

Blyton's amazingly agile "under mind" (Blyton, 1952; McLaren, 2007; Rudd, 1997; Stoney, 1974) dreamt up more than 750 books (Enid Blyton bibliography, 2023), which she saw like a film before her, while she recorded her imagined scenes as fast as she could. Her books are still selling 8 million plus copies per annum, now totalling something like half a billion books (Gentle & Moran, 2009). She had two supportive husbands who were smart enough to get out of her way, and let her get on with writing (Stoney, 1974). Yet she died relatively young in a rest home, suffering from the dementia that had first shown itself in 1961; aged 71, in 1968 (Greenfield, 1998).

Yes, Blyton's books were written standing in the shoes of empire, with absolute right on her side, shining the light of certain middle-class justice. But talk to most children, and they love her books (Rudd, 1997, 2004). There is something in Blyton's writing that connects: something timeless, something honest, something unique. The characters set down are allowed to be themselves, with all their rages, their mistakes, and their courage. They worry, they fear, and they get on with doing stuff. 

So why did so many librarians get so snotty? Why were various books banned, gossiped about, sniped at, and derided? It reads like snobbery: "Librarians [...] tried to avoid stocking the Blyton books on one or both of two grounds: firstly, that they did not exercise sufficiently the minds of their young readers; secondly, that they were racist and class-ridden" (Greenfield, 1998, pp. 44-45). "In the 1950s and 60s, school teachers wrote letters to the press condemning the Blyton books for being old fashioned, snobbish, racist and written in predigested prose. Some public librarians went so far as to ban the books [... decrying them as lacking a] thorough grounding in the ‘Three Rs’" (Greenfield, 1998, p. 100). Hmm. I wonder what is wrong with a children's book being easy to read? In considering the implied 'privilege', I also wondered if librarians had read the Galliano's Circus books?

It is further noted that Blyton "wrote clear, grammatical prose and that, as a former teacher herself who was kept up to date by innumerable letters and cards from her young readers, she knew the appeal of a fast-moving, eventful story" (Greenfield, 1998, p. 100). Many young people developed their love of reading via Blyton's action-filled books. Rudd notes the many "comments on the pleasure of reading opened up by Blyton" to be found in academic literature (1997, p. 98), while noting that many scholars see Blyton "as 'drug' literature - the 'Blyton neurosis ... a symptom of arrested development'" presumably on the part of academics allowing that they read her books as children (p. 98). Ouch. So reading Blyton is something we "do in private and wash our hands afterwards", to quote Heinlein (1973, p. 265)?

More snobbery. Well, bugger that. If we have read Blyton, let's own it. I read her, and enjoyed the rollicking, romping good yarns. I - 'just' a colonial - still have some of the books. And they were good.

Sam

References:

Baverstock, G. (1997). Enid Blyton (Tell me about writers series). Evans Brothers Limited.

Blyton, E. (1952). The story of my life. Grafton.

Brandreth, G. (31 March 2002). Unhappy Families. The Telegraph. https://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/books/unhappy-families-20020331-gdu3a9.html

Brandreth, G. (25 August 2019). The truth about Enid Blyton. https://www.gylesbrandreth.net/blog/2019/8/25/the-truth-about-enid-blyton

Clark, L. H. (2010). ‘Making its own history’: New Zealand historical fiction for children, 1862-2008. [Doctoral Thesis, The University of Waikato]. https://hdl.handle.net/10289/3959

Coetzee, L. (2010). Detecting Dominant Discourses in Selected Detective Fiction by Enid Blyton and Agatha Christie. [Doctoral dissertation, University of Pretoria]. https://repository.up.ac.za/bitstream/handle/2263/24763/Complete.pdf?sequence=10

Enid Blyton bibliography. (2023). Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enid_Blyton_bibliography 

Greenfield, G. (1998). Enid Blyton. Sutton Publishing.

Gentle, S. W., & Moran, E. (Executive Producers). (2009). Enid. Carnival Film and Television Ltd.

Heinlein, R. A. H. (1973). Time Enough for Love. New English Library.

Hunt, P. (1995). How not to read a children's book. Children's Literature in Education, 26(4), 231-240. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02355404

Leeson, R. (1985). Reading and righting: the past, present, and future of fiction for the young. Collins.

McLaren, D. (2007). Looking for Enid: The mysterious and inventive life of Enid Blyton. Portabello Books.

Mullan, B. (1987). The Enid Blyton Story. Boxtree Limited.

Ray, S. G. B. (1982). The Blyton Phenomenon: The controversy surrounding the world's most successful children's writer. Andre Deutsch Ltd.

Rudd, D. H. (1997). Enid Blyton and the mystery of children's literature. [Doctoral Thesis: Sheffield Hallam University]. https://shura.shu.ac.uk/20301/1/10700947.pdf

Rudd, D. (2004). Chapter 11: Blytons, Noddies, and Denoddification Centers: The Changing Constructions of a Cultural Icon. In T. Van der Walt (Ed.). Change and Renewal in Children’s Literature (No. 126, pp. 111–118). International Research Society for Children's Literature.

Smallwood, I. (1989). A Childhood at Green Hedges: A fragment of autobiography by Enid Blyton's daughter. Methuen Children's Books.

Stoney, B. (1974). Enid Blyton: The biography (2006 ed., reprint 2011). Tempus Publishing Ltd.

Tucker, N. (1975). The Blyton Enigma. Children's Literature in Education, 6(4), 191-197. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01146321