...Enid Blyton.
I've talked before about how I remember the library that used to be at the end of my road so well that I could still draw a map of it showing where every different kind of book was located. The Enid Blyton books were in two places. Noddy was at the back of the children's section where the books for very young children were kept in a more open section where the kiddies could play while their parents chose their books but the books for (slightly) older children were almost immediately behind the door through which the children's section was entered. The only things closer to the door were the authors whose names began with "A".
At one time or another I must have read most of the Famous Five books and most of the Secret Seven books and probably some of the others. They were enjoyable enough but even then I was aware that this wasn't the real world, wasn't any real world that had ever existed anywhere. It was a world of impossibly polite children who had holidays in the country with dotty old aunties who gave them ginger beer and cake; who said things like "I think that's jolly hard luck, old fellow" to each other; who occupied a perfect world; who battled with criminals and smugglers and spies; who romped through an eternal summer of blue skies and fluffy clouds. Even the names give the game away. Julian, George (a tomboyish girl), Dick and Anne and, of course, Timmy the dog. (Not to mention Aunt Fanny and Uncle Quentin!)
Frankly Hogwarts is far more realistic for all its wizardry and witchery.
Back then it didn't matter though. I would read anything. Anything at all. I was a fairly solitary child. I prefered the company of perfect fictional characters to the company of imperfect real playmates. The stories were short and pacy and utterly unrealistic in every possible way.
There is only one scene that I actually remember now from any of those books and that serves to show the values and attitudes that pervade the books. The children have, in one of the twenty or so summer holidays in which the books are set (during which they hardly age at all) a new friend. He is a scruffy urchin, possibly a gypsy* though it's a very long time since I read the books, who has a runny nose that he wipes on his sleeve. The children are insufferably patronising to him - insisting on giving him a handkerchief, and, if memory serves (which it may well not - it is over forty years ago) instructions on how to use it.
In hindsight it's difficult to explain the popularity of the books although the fact that the Famous Five began publication in 1942 may have some bearing. The war was still on and even later in the post war years it was a time of austerity and the sunny skies and optimistic adventures may have appealed to children of the time. By the time I came to them the series was reaching an end (the last was published in 1963) and the bad times were (or so everyone believed) behind us. For children of my generation the unbelievability was starting to win out over the escapist optimism.
Still, I remember them fondly and if I see any cheap reprint editions may well get some just for the nostalgia. Who wouldn't like to be six years old again?
(*Reprint editions may also be scarce because of this kind of thing. There are casual streams of racism, sexism and class distinction throughout the books that would sit very uneasily on the bookshelf today. There would need to be substantial editing, though it was a reflection of the times in which they were written.)
I've talked before about how I remember the library that used to be at the end of my road so well that I could still draw a map of it showing where every different kind of book was located. The Enid Blyton books were in two places. Noddy was at the back of the children's section where the books for very young children were kept in a more open section where the kiddies could play while their parents chose their books but the books for (slightly) older children were almost immediately behind the door through which the children's section was entered. The only things closer to the door were the authors whose names began with "A".
At one time or another I must have read most of the Famous Five books and most of the Secret Seven books and probably some of the others. They were enjoyable enough but even then I was aware that this wasn't the real world, wasn't any real world that had ever existed anywhere. It was a world of impossibly polite children who had holidays in the country with dotty old aunties who gave them ginger beer and cake; who said things like "I think that's jolly hard luck, old fellow" to each other; who occupied a perfect world; who battled with criminals and smugglers and spies; who romped through an eternal summer of blue skies and fluffy clouds. Even the names give the game away. Julian, George (a tomboyish girl), Dick and Anne and, of course, Timmy the dog. (Not to mention Aunt Fanny and Uncle Quentin!)
Frankly Hogwarts is far more realistic for all its wizardry and witchery.
Back then it didn't matter though. I would read anything. Anything at all. I was a fairly solitary child. I prefered the company of perfect fictional characters to the company of imperfect real playmates. The stories were short and pacy and utterly unrealistic in every possible way.
There is only one scene that I actually remember now from any of those books and that serves to show the values and attitudes that pervade the books. The children have, in one of the twenty or so summer holidays in which the books are set (during which they hardly age at all) a new friend. He is a scruffy urchin, possibly a gypsy* though it's a very long time since I read the books, who has a runny nose that he wipes on his sleeve. The children are insufferably patronising to him - insisting on giving him a handkerchief, and, if memory serves (which it may well not - it is over forty years ago) instructions on how to use it.
In hindsight it's difficult to explain the popularity of the books although the fact that the Famous Five began publication in 1942 may have some bearing. The war was still on and even later in the post war years it was a time of austerity and the sunny skies and optimistic adventures may have appealed to children of the time. By the time I came to them the series was reaching an end (the last was published in 1963) and the bad times were (or so everyone believed) behind us. For children of my generation the unbelievability was starting to win out over the escapist optimism.
Still, I remember them fondly and if I see any cheap reprint editions may well get some just for the nostalgia. Who wouldn't like to be six years old again?
(*Reprint editions may also be scarce because of this kind of thing. There are casual streams of racism, sexism and class distinction throughout the books that would sit very uneasily on the bookshelf today. There would need to be substantial editing, though it was a reflection of the times in which they were written.)
1 comment:
That is the kind of book I would have loved as a young girl. I remember reading The Bobsey Twins, which was a similarly fabricated family with "perfect world" fakeness and most likely sexism and racism underpinning the whole society. I loved them, though.
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