Enid Blyton always cared about her readers, in fact it has been said that her response to any criticism was always to state she wasn’t interested in the views of any critics over the age of 12.
Enid Mary Blyton was an English children’s writer, whose books have been worldwide bestsellers since the 1930s. She was born in a small flat above a shop in south London on 11th August 1897.
Blyton’s father, Thomas, was a cutlery salesman who had a close, loving relationship with his daughter; her relationship with her mother, Theresa, was more turbulent. Enid was devastated when her father left the family shortly after her 13th birthday to live with another woman. Later in life, she did not attend either of her parents’ funerals.
Blyton was very bright, a good student who excelled in studies, a talented pianist and had remarkable writing skills. In 1916, aged nineteen, she began training as a teacher. She began writing in her spare time and had poems, stories, and articles published in magazines. Her first book, a book of poems called Child Whispers, was published in 1922. She went on to create such famous series as Noddy, The Famous Five and The Secret Seven. At her peak, in the early 1950s, Blyton produced over 50 books a year.
Blyton married Major Hugh Alexander Pollock in August 1924 and became a full-time writer. Two daughters were born, Gillian in 1931, and Imogen Mary in 1935. The marriage was not happy, and in 1941 she began an affair with a surgeon named Darrell Waters. Blyton and Pollock divorced, and she married Waters in October 1943, remaining with him for the rest of her life. She was, supposedly, a terrible mother – her daughter Imogen described her as “arrogant, insecure, pretentious, and without a trace of maternal instinct”.
Altogether, Blyton is believed to have written around 700 books (including collections of short stories) as well as magazines, articles and poems. Blyton’s health started to deteriorate after the demise of her second husband in 1967. She is reported to have had Alzheimer’s disease and died on 28th of November 1968 at the age of 70.