Enid blyton biography reviews

If you are an Enid Blyton fan or love her books, please read this book as it made me like the author more as a person.
I recommend Enid Blyton: The Biography as a valuable insight into one of the world's most popular children's authors.
Customers find the book insightful and informative about the talented, interesting, and prolific author.

•

Nadia Cohen The Real Enid Blyton Pen & Sword, Pen & Sword History.
30 Oct 2022.

Thank you, Net Galley and Pen & Sword, for providing me with this uncorrected proof for review.

I was pleased to receive this book for review, even though I am reasonably familiar with the story of this prolific writer who won children’s, if not adults’, hearts with her amazing output. Mysteries to be solved by children; magical and imaginative adventures in a wishing chair or faraway tree; school sagas; reinterpretation of bible and classical stories; and a host of appealing and unappealing toy characters whose behaviour covers a wide gamut of naughtiness, moral strength and comic moments were a source of great reading for many children.
Nadia Cohen’s story of Blyton’s writing, covering so many examples of the fiction, is an engaging read. It is here that one of the strengths of the biography lies. Too often the writer’s story seems to be told without much attention to the fiction written. Cohen deftly weaves the story of a writer with character flaws together with appealing insigh

•

As a child, I was a great fan of The Famous Five, and read just about any Enid Blyton books I could get my hands on. As an adult, I’ve not re-read them, probably because I’m pretty sure the experience would be disappointing. However, having been such a reader of them in the past, I was keen to read Enid Blyton: The Biography.

Authorised by one of Enid Blyton’s daughters, it’s written by Barbara Stoney. First written in the 1970s, less than a decade after Blyton's 1968 death, an updated edition was released in 2006. Stoney spent a huge amount of time researching the author, and had unprecedented access to letters and diaries, as well as interviewing people who knew or met Enid personally or professionally.

Enid Blyton was an incredibly prolific author who wrote far more than I realised. It was fascinating to read how she developed her craft, from writing poems as a teenager, to working as a teacher and writing newsletters for teachers and students, although she started out wanting to write for adults. It was through the newsletter and the poems

•

silverfush's review

Go to review page

3.0

Intresting story of a woman who wrote a few of my favourite stories from my childhood. I admit I was inspired to read this after seeing a docudrama about the woman. The book is not as scandolous as the film.

sherwoodreads's review

Go to review page

When I was nine years old, my babysitter brought me a Blyton in a stealthy play to keep me from leading my sibs into bratty behavior. Always book-starved, I glommed onto that book and fell straight into the story. It was The Castle of Adventure. I discovered five more by her on the library shelves, and checked them out and reread them repeatedly.

It wasn't until I was considerably older and traveled to England that I discovered just how much she'd written, but by then, alas, most of the magic had gone out, except for remembered passion for those Adventure stories. A week or two ago, I was talking to an English lady in her eighties who was a dedicated Blyton reader as a child; during the war, she spent her scant pocket money on Blyton's magazines, sharing them with fri