Did Enid Blyton pay other people for stories?

[canteatcustard]

My hubby has been doing a little research in to his families history and visited his 80yr old auntie, who told him that a relative used to be a local seamstress who liked to write children's stories as a hobby.
There were manuscripts which were left with another relative that has long since died.
However the rumour is that she wrote the stories and Blyton brought them from her.
any one else suggest how i can do further research?

I think that's unlikely that she took them and passed them off as her own. EB was a very quick writer-I think it took her less than a week to write a Famous Five book, and I think she would have regarded it cheating to take other people's stories-she really didn't need to as she could turn them out herself quickly enough.

However she did edit a weekly children's paper for a time (Sunny Stories I think) so your relative may have had some accepted for that. She edited it from 1926-1953 (when Malcolm Saville took over).
She was only credited as editor, but is generally considered to have written most if not all.

My aunty used to buy me Sunny Stories. I have a letter I wrote to her when we were evacuated thanking her for sending me Sunny Stories and saying I missed my toys.

I did a little googling and Blyton did take someone to court for spreading rumours that she brought stories of other people, and she won.

Hubby aunt is quite firm on the matter and said that if we had the manuscripts that Enid returned to this relative, it would be proof.
Although am not sure how, perhaps she signed them?

I was always led to believe (by childrrb’s Librarian at the library near where I gre up) that “Enid Blyton” was an umbrella brand for several authors. If it’s jusr one person, she was incredibly prolific!

I’ve just read EB’s wiki page and see that she denies using ghost writers. And that her second husband’s surname was Darrell Walters!

And that her second husband’s surname was Darrell Walters!

Sorry, that was meant to be a quote in bold. But yeah, that's creepy. Even more so if she met him after writing the books...😂

Enid Blyton was my Grandfathers cousin. Thats my claim to fame

It wouldn't surprise me, nor would the umbrella theory. Prolific and pretty terrible but there wasn't much to choose from.

Wasn't it Darrell Waters?
He was her editor before her husband.

There's plenty of evidence she wrote most of the stories herself anyway. Definitely not an umbrella over several authors. I think one of her daughter's is still around and talks about her writing during the day and them reading them in the evening.

Don't think she would have risked ruining her reputation by using other writers. Can't see why she would have needed to either.

Such a shame that i cant prove or disprove.

Entirely believable. I'm an academic specialising in this area. Loads of authors have done this, like Alexandre Dumas.

I should say I don't know if EB did this specifically, just that lots of prolific "authors" have done. Carolyn Keene of Nancy Drew fame became "Caroline Quine" for the French market.

OP if you do want to research this then I'd start by looking at her correspondence with her publisher and the publisher's archive. You probably won't be granted access without proper research accreditation from a uni or similar though, unfortunately.

Her plots were thin and characterisation, she had this 'cinema screen' technique where she didn't have to try, it all came out in a stream of consciousness. She once said she could never have thought of the things her characters said. This 'ability' came from having a very unhappy childhood, a way of escape.

The upshot of this is that her writing was very speedy. She got to the golf course post Famous Five book as quickly as possible at the end of the week, for example. It also meant that there were inaccuracies and the timings of things didn't always make sense e.g. terms in the St Clares series, chronology etc. So I think she really was that prolific.

Weeelllll.... except those are all the aspects that would make her work easy to farm out as well, and she was hardly going to admit it, was she? I just don't think it's possible to sustain that kind of writing intensity month in, month out, particularly when you're doing all longhand / on a typewriter (possibly dictating?) and combining it with running a household. I don't know. I have no proof, have never studied her, but she certainly fits the pattern of the kind of authors who did buy in copy from nameless hacks.

It has been suggested a lot before.

There were a lot of accusations at the time because what you say makes perfect sense, her output was enormous.

She was essentially an absent parent, especially when her second daughter was born, getting very angry if anyone interrupted her working hours with nannies/housekeepers running her home. The book 'A Childhood at Green Hedges' (by her daughter, Imogen Smallwood)is a fascinating book and well worth a read which explains how at least this amount of writing/output was feasible given her working life and family set up at the time. Her daughters have both said she was essentially welded to her typewriter and was an extraordinary character. No one can say for sure but FWIW I think her work was her own.

When she sadly got dementia, towards the end of her life, when 'her filing cabinet mind' took a real hit her work rapidly deteriorated and Five Go Together Again was very weak and repetitive for example. Her daughter has stated a later Noddy book was utter nonsense, unfortunately and could not be published.

Her two daughters give contrasting narrative of their childhoods (and I believe they fell out over it?) but one certainly said she was a very absent mother who spent all of her time at the typewriter. I think she said there was one in the toilet too that EB would use whilst evacuating her bowels.

Remember many of her books for children were not of the length of the Famous Five books and much, much shorter and couldn't have been churned out pretty swiftly. And, to be honest, children's fiction for the most part was nowhere near as "demanding" as it is these days.

Agatha Christie took ages to work out a plot, often leaving them to ferment in exercise books for months and years, but once she'd sorted it, could often write the book in three weeks and most of those are longer than anything by Blyton (but equally a fairly penny plain writing style) and without the pre-work. The only reason she didn't write more was because it didn't pay her too - taxation was so much higher.

Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys were both well known to have been written by a consortium (with many authors doing both) neither author actually existed as a single entity.

Nothing to add but this has been a really enjoyable thread to follow.
Really captivating so thank you OP. I hope you find the original manuscripts and discover the truth.
Family folklore is a funny beast. According to my late grandmother, the story of the bogey man originated with my family. Many years back my ancestor was head groomsman for lord Lonsdale. The story was that before a big race he was ordered to sleep in the stable with a prize horse due to threats being made. Consequently there was indeed an attempt to nobble the horse, to which my ancestor reacted. His surname was Boag. Hence 'beware of the bogey man'.
Far fetched maybe, but my grandmother dined out on tge story for years

I don’t believe Enid Blyton had ghostwriters. However some may be interested to know that there are a couple of poems published in the 1920s that experts believe to be by Enid Blyon written under a pen name. The details are somewhere on the Enid Blyton society website. Possibly also mentioned in a Barbara Stoney’s biography. Sorry for being so vague!

Enid Blyton's stories are all a similar format, the Secret 7 and the Famous 5 are really similar for example. I don't see why it wouldn't be feasible for her to write all the stories herself.

Her two daughters give contrasting narrative of their childhoods (and I believe they fell out over it?) but one certainly said she was a very absent mother who spent all of her time at the typewriter
I don't think they fell out over it. I think there is some suspicion she had bad PND with #2 which showed with the different relationships.

Although interestingly the daughter who was more into promoting EB and her books and being involved in decisions after EB's death was the one who seemed to have the worse relationship with her in life.