Enid Blyton Book by Ayesha Azhar (my reading book TXT) 📕

In a letter in response to BBC producer Antony Derville’s request for an interview from 1951, Blyton begs off with the following:

“I am not really much interested in talking to adults, although I suppose practically every mother in the kingdom knows my name & my books – it’s their children I love. I get over a hundred letters a day, from all over the world, from children & parents, and it’s a wonder I ever have time to write books, let alone speak! Still, I manage it somehow, though it is distressing to have to turn down so many attractive invitations.

”

Over the course of her 44-year writing career, Blyton produced an amazing 1,778 books, not to mention another 11,117 short fiction works. In 1950 alone, she wrote 87 books. This is even more incredible considering she didn’t know how to touch-type and wrote everything on a manual typewriter with her index fingers.Blyton, in another letter to McKellar, described how a plot would develop: “the whole story sparkles on my private 'screen' inside my head, and I simply put down what I see and hear.” As if in ahypnotic trance, Blyton would put down everything as she visualized it without the typical stop-and-start self-editing of most writers. The plot would flow seamlessly from beginning to end.

Along with her children’s stories, Blyton branched out into merchandising starting in 1948. She helped produce a board game, “Journey Through Fairyland,” and jigsaw puzzles. A year later, with the wartime restrictions on paper lifted, her output grew to 32 books, including the first appearance of Noddy, her most popular fairy tale character, in the Sunday Graphic, then later that year in book form. Noddy showed up on television in a puppet show in 1955, and by 1962, the “Noddy” book series had achieved 26 million in sales.

It was in the late 1950s that Enid Blyton's health began to deteriorate. She experienced bouts of breathlessness and had a suspected heart attack. By the early 1960s it was apparent that she was suffering from dementia. Her mind was no longer sharp and she became confused, afflicted by worrying memory lapses and seized by a desire to return to her childhood home in Beckenham with both her parents. Her last two books (excluding reprints of earlier material) were re-tellings of Bible stories, The Man Who Stopped to Help and The Boy Who Came Back, both published in August 1965.

In the late summer of 1968 Enid was admitted to a Hampstead nursing home and, three months later, she died peacefully in her sleep on 28th November 1968, at the age of 71. She was cremated at Golders Green in North London and a memorial service was held for her at St. James's Church, Piccadilly, on 3rd January 1969.

 Several decades after her death, Enid Blyton is not forgotten. The best of her lives on in her books, many of which are still in print, and she continues to entertain, educate and inspire children around the globe through the words she wrote. She encourages her readers to look afresh at the world around them—to observe, explore, investigate, discover and learn. Long may that continue! To quote a few apt lines from Enid Blyton's "The Poet," published in The Poetry Review in 1919:

"Dear heart And soul of a child, Sing on!"

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Publication Date: 03-18-2014

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Dedication:
To Enid Blyton herself.