British writer, Enid Blyton produced over 700 books, in a career spanning forty five years. What can children's book writers learn from this much loved author? Publishing Children's Books - How Did Enid Blyton Do It?
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- Blyton worked extremely hard at writing. She didn't wait for inspiration to strike, but wrote every day.
- She promoted her books very well, visiting schools, forming clubs and replying personally to thousands of fan letters a year.
- Blyton knew her audience, because she was writing for the little girl she had once been.
- She wrote to escape, and created ideal worlds where children came first and where all conflict and real danger were glossed over. Children love her books because they are so far from reality. They are true escapism, with the adventure set in an extremely safe and rigid domestic world, where everything always turns out alright in the end.
- She wrote according to a formula, which made her books easy for young readers to master.
Enid Blyton's Life Story
Enid Mary Blyton was born on 11th August 1897 in South. She had two younger brothers, Hanly and Carey. Her father, whom she loved dearly, left the family when she was twelve. She did not get on with her mother, and found refuge in her imagination, dreaming up stories to escape to an ideal world.
After school she trained as a teacher, and worked as a governess until she was 27, when her writing career became so successful that she could afford to write full time.
She married twice, to publisher Hugh Pollock and to Kenneth Darrell Waters, a surgeon, and had two daughters, Gillian and Imogen.
By her late sixties she had begun to suffer from dementia, and died in 1968, aged 71.
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