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The Blyton Phenomenon
The controversy surrounding the world’s most successful children’s writer

SHEILA G. RAY

I. INTRODUCTION

II. ENID BLYTON, THE LIBRARIANS, THE TEACHERS AND THE PARENTS

1. The early years
2. The war years 1939-45
3. The period of recovery 1946-58
4. The second golden age 1958-74
5. Bullock and after

III. ENID BLYTON AND THE CHILDREN

IV. CONCLUSION

I. INTRODUCTION

II. ENID BLYTON, THE LIBRARIANS, THE TEACHERS AND THE PARENTS

1. The early years

P14. « The young book-reading public was still predominantly « a sheltered middle-class public » »

P15. « Her writing, in terms of the world she portrayed and of the style in which she wrote, was very much to the taste of the 1930s. »

P16. « Enid Blyton’s holiday adventure, mystery ans school stories are probably her most popular books. »

P18. « Enid Blyton hoped to be read by children of both sexes and in order to achieve this she even set her first series of school stories in a co-educational school. »

P19. « Period when most adults who cared about children’s reading were more concerned with suitability of content than with literary quality »

P25. « In the period before 1939 there were no signs of hostility towards Enid Blyton and by 1939 most people were deeply concerned with a far greater threat to Britain’s children as the Second World War began. »

2. The war years 1939-45

P26. « The second world war had a twofold effect on children’s book generally. First, there was the damage caused by bombing raids on London, when publishers’ stocks and printing plates were destroyed; secondly, there was the paper shortage. »

P27. « Paul Hodder-Williams was annoyed about the supposed banning of her books by public libraries. »

P29. « Her books were being published at a time when well-established children’s books were not being reprinted in sufficient quantities to meet demand. The lack of classics was particularly regretted. »

P32. «