Enid Blyton: The Greatest Publishing Phenomenon of Our Time

Enid Blyton is the greatest publishing phenomenon of our time. In fact, a magazine for writers, Writer's Digest cited The Guiness Book of Records that had credited Enid Blyton with thisrecord, though they did not describe Enid Blyton as categorically being the "greatest publishing phenomenon of our time." In fact, no one knows for sure how many books Enid Blyton published. Despite being a subscriber (an irregular one) to Writer's Digest, I am not sure which exact magazine or the Guiness Book of Records this assertion came from. A circulation of it was posted on the Internet several years ago. I am not sure whether it is still there. Maybe it could be googled. Some statistics put Enid Blyton's books at 600, while one Internet website I looked at several years ago puts the number at 756 and the EBS puts the number at around 1771. It is these glaring statistics that forced me to assert that Enid Blyton as being the greatest publishing phenomenon of our time, after all no other author/writer has attained such a monumental statistical feat in the past century, let alone in publishing history as a whole.

As for Enid Blyton being the "Muhammed Ali of Children's Literature"was borne out of my discussions of several of Enid Blyton's with some of my fellow classmates in primary/elementary school in the 1970s atthe time when Muhammad Ali was describing himself as "the greatest." Because of the communalistic culture of sharing in Africa where I attended my primary school as well as the paucity of books, especially novels, we were forced to swap books such as those of Enid Blyton. This was expecially so during the first Ali-Frasier fight in 1971. This was also the time that Blytonmania was at its height since most students/pupils relished reading any Blyton book they could get a handle of. Since Muhammad Ali and Enid Blyton were very popular figures at that time, some students equated Enid Blyton's popularity with that of Muhammed Ali. Fast forward, as I was writing this book, I recalled those "Blyton Days," and concluded that despite Muhammad Ali being a boxer, Enid Blyton could be equated with having been the"Muhammed Ali of Children's Literature," though probably because gender and the predominant masculinity of boxing, one would not dream of describing Muhammed Ali as "the Enid Blyton of Boxing."

The Famous Five having been described as "The Beatles of Children's Literature" came about in 1970 (around April and/or May) when The Beatles formally broke up just as some of us in primary/elementaryschool were at that time very much immersed and mesmerized in Blytonmania. That is the year I first read an Enid Blyton book. Again, the two manias, i.e.Blytonmania and Beatlemania, seemed to be going in opposite directions, especially in countries like Uganda and other developing and predominantly non-Western countries and regions. For people in these regions that had just been exposed to Blyton's books for the first time, Blytonmania seemed to be going up while Beatlemania was going down, while in Britain, Beatlemania seemed to have been going up around 1963, yet Blytonmania had started to peak with Enid Blyton's "farewell interview" with the BBC that year, an aspect crowned by the last original Blytonian Famous Five title, Five Are Together Again that was published the same year. Even at one time, John Lennon, the late and former Beatle at one time, seemed to have either uttered or mis-pronounced Enid Blyton's name, an aspect that suggested that Lennon and other Beatle members were well aware of Enid Blyton and her books, including The Famous Five series. Therefore, these cross-incidences or rather coincidences seem to have tied Enid Blyton and her books inexorably in several instances to The Beatle Phenomenon. Surely, between 1942 and 1963, The Famous Five, despite being a fictional group, rocked, especially in Britain (as evident by fans urging Enid Blyton to write more books, especailly in The Famous Five category as well as her public engagements such as book signings and overseeing the production of some Famous Five movies, though the only difference between The Famous Five and The Beatles was that they did not scream or screech for The Famous Five as was the case with The Beatles) just as The Beatles, though founded in 1960, would rock Britain and the world between 1963 and 1970. Therefore, the relationship between Enid Blyton (The Famous Five) and The Beatles was evident. Thus, in light of these overlapping incidences and coincidences, The Famous Five could be equated with having been in several charcteristics, "The Beatles of Children's Literature."

The Secret Seven having been deemed "the cradle of James Bond" is borne by several observations. Even before reading Robert Druce's This Day Our Daily Fictions: An Enquiry Into the Multi-MillionBestseller Series of Enid Blyton and Ian Fleming, intuitively knew that there was a connection between Enid Blyton and Ian Fleming. In Robert Druce's book, books of the 1930s that dealt with espionage are suspected to have inspired Ian Fleming in creating the James Bond persona. As some have pointed out in this thread, the Adventure series is close to The James Bond series. For instance, Bill Smugs (aka Cunningham) is known to have had several prototype characteristics of James Bond. In my research on The Secret Seven series, I felt that some symbols of this group and the year in which the group was founded in 1949 had some few common characteristics with the James Bond character (1952). For instance, we had the words, "Secret" and "7" replicated in James Bond i.e."Secret Agent," and "007." The only difference was the addition of "license to kill" characteristic of James Bond. Therefore, since I first read the James Bond books in Uganda prides itself as being, "The Cradle of the Nile," the word cradle came back to my memory as I was writing my book since I strongly believed that The Secret Seven, in light of these symbols, played a role in the founding of The James Bond character. Thus, The Secret Seven is deemed to have been "the cradle of James Bond" and who knows in a figurative manner, James Bond may have spied, tongue-in- cheek, on The Secret Seven's shed and that may have been how he obtained that "secret 7" logo.

As for Enid Blyton's changing viewpoints during her literary career toward familial issues, science, health, religion and the environments one has just to read the book since the main gist of it deals with these aspects. One snippet I will divulge is her mentioning of her memory loses (Dementia/Alzheimer's) by satirizing these aspects in people as young as Dolly Daydreams in a story titled, "She Lost Her Memory," in After Tea who would forget her way from home as well as her mother. In a story, "Fred's Forgettery" that appeared in A Story At Green Hedges who had a very bad memory and had to pay for his "forgetfulness" in many ways. Even Julian in The Famous Five series has strange memory lapses at his tender age. P.C. Goon has memory lapses in The Mystery Of The Spiteful Letters . In books such as Five Go To Billycock Hill, Five Get Into A Fix, and Five Have A Mystery To Solve, Uncle Quentin's memory progressively gets worse by forgetting his breakfast, hiding newspapers in chimneys, losing or forgetting where he had put his valuable papers as well as Professor Hayling not remembering the kids that have been sent to him in Five Are Together Again. All these aspects are ways in which Enid Blyton satarized her worsening memory problems toward the end of her publishing career, after all, none other than her own late daughter, Gillian Baverstock, who in an interview at the 2006 Edinburgh Book Festival suggested that Enid Blyton hardly remembered her own grand children in 1961 and had turned hostile towards them as Professor Hayling would do to The Famous Five two years later in the Five Are Together Again satire. This is one aspect I highlight in my book with regard to Enid Blyton's changing health fortunes.
Stephen Isabirye is the author of a book on Enid Blyton, titled, The Famous Five: A Personal Anecdotage (http://www.thefamousfiveapersonalanecdotage.blogspot.com/).