Which publisher will be rushing to publish a children’s book manuscript he or she has not even seen – especially in today’s saturated and competitive market? What children’s story gets accepted for publication instantly when the author won’t be doing any publicity and certainly no book signings either? Normal rules do not apply when the author’s name is Enid Blyton.
How to get published? For this children’s book author, the question does not apply. Enid Blyton died in 1968 leaving behind numerous series of books, with nearly 800 titles translated in over 40 languages. She sold over 500 million copies worldwide, The Guardian reports on February 23, 2010. Among the most popular of her series are The Famous Five and the Secret Seven, children’s adventure stories, read and enjoyed by many generations of kids. Although a controversial figure, Enid Blyton had never had a problem getting her manuscripts accepted for publication. The same remains true after her death.
Children’s Story Manuscript by Enid Blyton Discovered
It was December 2010 when the archivist of Seven Stories made the discovery of the forgotten manuscript. Seven Stories is a national gallery and archive for children’s books in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. Its collection includes manuscripts and illustrations from famous children’s books authors. The recent revelation of the children’s book manuscript by Enid Blyton brought on ripples of excitement.
After conversations with the Enid Blyton Society, the manuscript was found to be a full novel, 180-pages-long, a fantasy adventure of Mr Tumpy and his friends Muffin and Puffin. Although it was first assumed that the manuscript was an early draft of the picture book Mr Tumpy and his Caravan (now rare and out of print), it was not so: “the typescript is nothing like the published book, it became very clear that we had something new and pretty special in the archive,” reports Hannah Green in Seven Stories (23 Feb. 2011), adding that the children’s story was written sometime in the mid-1930s.
How to Get Published
Enid Blyton’s critics accused her of being “second-rate”, her books lacking in literary value, with the head of BBC schools department Jean Sutcliffe writing in 1954 of the author as a “competent and tenacious second-rater” (BBC News, 15 November 2009). However, Blyton’s books appealed to her young audience, and there was never a question of “how to get published” but rather, of “how often.”
Will this children’s story manuscript get published? Hannah Green sees Blyton’s work as “a little bit experimental and perhaps not as confident and accomplished as her later works. ... We don’t know why it wasn’t published, whether she didn’t like it or a publisher rejected it.” It is possible that this children’s story will not be looking to the social media to promote itself: the name Enid Blyton is probably sufficient to get it published.
Lito Apostolakou - Lito is a historian with an interest in digital archives and online historical resources. She is the author of blog Palimpsest.
