When was enid blyton died

Things had deteriorated badly between her and Theresa and it was around this time that Enid broke ties completely with her mother, spending holidays from college with the Attenboroughs rather than returning home to her mother and brothers. She kept in touch with her father, visiting him at his office in London, but she could not bring herself to accept Florence, with whom Thomas had had three more children, and she and her father were not as close as they had once been.

Since a couple of earlier published poems including the one printed in the Arthur Mee magazine have never been traced, "Have You? Next she became governess to the four Thompson brothers, relatives of Mabel Attenborough, at a house called Southernhay in Surbiton, Surrey.

She remained there for four years and, during that time, a number of children from neighbouring families also came to join her "experimental school," as she called it. The accounts of lessons at "Miss Brown's School" in Enid Blyton's Book of the Year surely owe something to her years as a teacher at her own little school in Surbiton, which she later said was "one of the happiest times of my life.

At least, that is what she was told but the truth was that he had suffered a stroke and died in an armchair at home in Sunbury, where he lived with Florence and his new family. It appears that the true whereabouts of his death was not made public as it would have caused embarrassment owing to Theresa having been so secretive about the breakdown of her marriage.

Enid had continued to visit her father at his London office, despite being estranged from the rest of her family, and the news must have come as a dreadful shock. However, she did not attend his funeral or even mention his death to the Thompsons.

It may be that, having cut herself off from the rest of her family, she did not feel up to dealing with such a difficult and emotional occasion and answering awkward questions from either her family or her employers.

Or perhaps her way of coping was to shut away her feelings, as she had been taught to do as a child. Stories and articles were accepted for publication by various periodicals, including Teacher's World , and she also wrote verses for greetings cards.

Distinguished Service Order in His first marriage had ended when his wife had an affair, and he had to obtain a divorce in order to marry Enid. The wedding, at Bromley Register Office, was a quiet occasion, with no member of either Enid's or Hugh's family attending the ceremony. The couple honeymooned in Jersey and Enid was later to base Kirrin in the Famous Five books on an island, castle and village they visited there.

After the wedding Enid and Hugh lived first of all in an apartment in Chelsea, moving to their first house, newly-built Elfin Cottage in Beckenham, in It became a weekly publication in and changed its name to Enid Blyton's Sunny Stories , finally becoming Sunny Stories.

However, that book is episodic in nature, reading more like a collection of individual stories about two mischievous rabbits, and The Enid Blyton Book of Brownies , published in , is perhaps more deserving of the title "first novel. Before that she had written her manuscripts in longhand. Hugh was instrumental in helping his wife establish herself as a writer by publishing her stories at Newnes and, almost certainly, by teaching her about contracts and the business side of her work.

Hugh indulged his wife's playful, childlike side and they would build snowmen together, play "catch" and French cricket in the garden, and have games of "conkers. Enid described it as being "like a house in a fairy tale. There was also a tale of treasure hidden on the premises, which has never been found. At Old Thatch Hugh and Enid began to have more of a social life, enjoying dinner parties, tennis and bridge. In October they went on a cruise to Madeira and the Canary Islands aboard the Stella Polaris, the details of which remained vividly in Enid's mind, providing her with material for books written years later such as The Pole Star Family and The Ship of Adventure , both published in Their mother was not fond of animals and their father was worried that cats and dogs might spoil his garden.

Enid had once found a stray kitten which she called Chippy and kept secretly for a fortnight, but when her mother found out about it the kitten was sent away. Enid made up for that by having plenty of pets when she was grown-up — dogs, cats, goldfish, hedgehogs, tortoises, fantail pigeons, hens, ducks and many others.

One of her most famous pets was Bobs, a fox-terrier. Enid Blyton wrote letters for her Teacher's World column about family life as seen through the eyes of Bobs — in fact, she kept on writing these "Letters from Bobs" long after the dog had died! After a miscarriage in they went on to have another daughter, Imogen, who was born on 27th October She had already written another fairly long adventure story, The Wonderful Adventure , in , but that was really a novella rather than a full-length novel.

Enid was by now giving more time than ever to her writing, relying increasingly on domestic staff for housework, gardening and childcare, and she did not have a lot of time to spend with her children. She played with the girls for an hour after tea and sometimes took Imogen out with her to meet Gillian from school.

Enid and Hugh no longer had as much time together either. Both were very busy with their work and Hugh, who had been working with Churchill on his writings about the First World War, was falling into depression at the realisation that the world was on the brink of another war.

And I remember coming away from the station with tears in my eyes. I never saw him again. Why, when she was an adult, did Gillian not try to get in touch with her father?

Once she had died, I did try to find him. He was living in Malta with his new wife and daughter, but I was too late to see him. He died two weeks after I found out where he was.

No, I did not love him very much. He was a successful surgeon, aged 51, when he married Enid Blyton in October She was He tried to make me feel good about myself. He would dance with me. He made me feel I looked fine, which was a kindness. He was so possessive, he was like a clamp on my mother.

Both Gillian and Imogen had nannies, both were sent away to boarding school, and while, as a consequence, neither wanted nannies or boarding schools for their own children, it is only Imogen who recalls her childhood with anguish. The bleakest moment seems to have been the time when she came back from school to discover the nanny she had expected to find at home had been replaced by somebody new.

She made a scene. I learned of her departure, lying in bed that night. He said that I was wicked and ungrateful and a terrible nuisance to my mother. If the words were cruel, the anger that exploded from him was terrifying. He did not touch me. He never hit me, however angry he was. As I lay in bed after he had gone back downstairs, no doubt to tell my mother that he had done a good job, I slowly and grimly came to terms with the fact that I would never again be able to talk about myself, about my worries, problems and joys.

Like so many other children in similar situations, I began to build a wall round my inner self so that I could never be hurt in that way again.

Even now, all these years later, there is something guarded about Imogen. She has been wounded in her life and the scars do show. I do not sense self-pity or chippiness, but the pain is evident and she makes no effort to hide it. Even as little girls, the pair seem to have been jealous of one another.

Gillian says that while she had to wait until she was ten before she could eat with her mother in the evening, Imogen was accorded that privilege and many others at an earlier age. It is impossible to know which of the girls is giving the more accurate account of life with Enid Blyton. This is quite untrue. She saw everything in black and white. She was emotionally immature. She could love the children who were her readers.

The familiarity aspect is more troubling. At the benign end, this means the comforting figure of the schoolteacher or matron or aunt with firm rules but twinkling eyes there is so much twinkling in Blyton you could use her as kindling. The gender politics — where fathers fulminate in studies, mothers serve up tea, and tomboy George must learn she will never be as good as a real boy — are problematic to say the least.

While golliwogs — a racial caricature of a toy — were dropped from a s BBC adaptation of Noddy , and two of the Famous Five, Fanny and Dick, have been astutely renamed, what is harder to eradicate is a general sense of smug judgement. She had already sized her up and knew her to be a spoiled only child, selfish and difficult to handle at first. Blyton remains a bestselling author, raising the question: who buys them? Two years later she got married to Hugh Alexander Pollock who was a book editor at the firm that had published two of her works.

In her mid thirties Enid went through some crisis in her life which included the death of her father. This troubled her emotionally and she began to show signs of instability. She started post marital affairs and in divorced her husband to marry Kenneth Fraser, a man she had met while she was still with her first husband.

However she remained in her second marriage for the rest of her life.