The Blyton Story - Enid Blyton old newspaper article retrieved from The Sunday Herald, May 3 1953 Australia
full text:
THE BLYTON STORY
Review of "The Story of My Life" by Enid Blyton - Pitkin, London
Who is the most powerful person in the world today?
Malenkov? Eisenhower?
You may not agree with me, but I think one of the main
contenders for the title should be an English-woman, 5 ft 4 in of human
dynamite named Enid Blyton. The reason? Her power over the minds of children.
She has written about 300 books for children, which have
been translated into almost every language, including Russian and Japanese.
All over the world, children of both sexes rush for Miss
Blyton’s books as fast as they become available.
She covers a wide field- school stories, family stories,
animal stories, mystery stories. The age of her reading publick is from about
three years to about 13 years.
Enid Blyton is something of a legend in the book trade.
There is nobody else quite in her class.
Her yearly earnings in Britain alone are estimated at about £22,000
sterling. That is a minimum estimate. Some say her total income is many times
greater, but Miss BLyton does not reveal it.
All this is nothing compared with her power over the minds
of children. Hitler was not alone in saying: “Give me the children up to the
age of seven and they are mine for life.”
But he used his power for very different purpose. Enid Blyton
is a wife and mother before everything else. She directs all her efforts, she
says, towards peace.
“I think sometimes a woman CAN see more clearly than a man,”
she said in a recent interview.
“Anyway, all the heroes in my stories are British, all the
stories have British backgrounds and show the truth about our Christian way of
life. So children in Japan and in the U.S.S.R. – the future generation- will
know the truth about our empire…”
Miss Blyton’s books are pirated in Russia, but the loss of
her Russian royalties doesn’t worry her at all.
Some time ago I took Nicky, a four-year-old boy tot, to the
offices of a glossy London magazine devoted exclusively to the upbringing,
welfare , and guidance of children.
The result was appaling. The staff behaved like hens in a
hen-run faced with a dog fox.
This same tot is now six and a confirmed “lady hater.” I
borrowed him from his mother, gave him “The Story of My Life” to read, and then
took him to tea with Enid BLyton.
From the moment that he discovered a toffee (strong
peppermint) in the cap of model of Enid Blyton’s best selling dwarf here ,
“Little Noddy”, the interview was a push-over. They were mad about each other,
had to be chipped apart at about 7.30.
Enid Blyton is near 50, at a guess, although the date of her
birth is not given in “Who’s Who,” where the palce of birth is registered as
Dulwich. She has two daughters, Imogen and Gillian.
Writing is in the Blyton bloodstream. Her father and uncle
were contributors to the famous “Yellow Book” of the naughty nineties. [For
those born after 1886: “The Yellow Book” was a miscellany published in the
nineties – stamping ground of Oscar Wilde, Lord Alfred Douglas, Aubrey
Beardsley, and other.]
Her autobiography reveals that, as a child, Enid easily
topped her class in “essay, composition, and story-writing.”
She used to tell herself stories in bed, kept a diary,
adored letter-writing (she still tries to answer her thousands of fan letter
herself, having no secretary), and at the age of 14 won a prize from the great
Arthur Mee himself for a poem.
Her family was not crazy about her longing to be a writer
and scowled at the rejection slips that fell daily on the Blyton doormat.
“In the end I was so ashamed I used to creep down early and
collect my poor long envelopes before anyone was up…” she says.
Equally strangely the book trade did not reach quickly to
her first story strips.
She was writing under the name of “Mary Pollock,” and
eventually persuaded a dour Scottish printer to set them ip for her. The result
was highly satisfactory to one and all, and the Mary Pollock books are still
selling.
Her father intended her for a musical career. So he entered
her at the Guildhall School of Music. She suddenly realised that, instead she
wanted to be a kindergarten teacher. She knew it would help her to write for
children.
Blazing with this discovery, she put through a long distance
call to her father. He was shattered.
“Why must you be so head-strong, Enid?” he said.
Enid’s reply was characteristic: “Please, if you love me,
let me do this…”.
So that was that.
In private life Enid Blyton is Mrs. Darrel-Waters, in
appearance as sound and whole some as a ripe apple,with masses of naturally
curly hair.
She is full of powerful vitality, talks with immense pride
of her daughters (one has just become an M.A. of St. Andrew’s University, the
other is captain of her house lacrosse team at Benenden).
Her doctor husband arrived home before I manage to drag
Nicky away, He told me: “She really is a wife and mother before anything else.”
The last word should really remain with Nicky, who clutching
models of Little Noddy and Big Ears to his bosom, together with a jigsaw puzzle
called “Noddy at the Races” and what seemed to me like 50 books with titles
like “The Big Noddy Book” and “A Prize for Marry Mouse,” remarked as the car
lurched out into the road:” A very nice lady.”
“But, Nicky, I though you hated ladies,” I said.
“SOME ladies,” said Nicky with immense scorn.
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