Blyton and Rowling.

A compare and contrast piece at the Telegraph:

[Intermediaries allow] Rowling to preserve some private life. Blyton had one, too, but in front of it was a manufactured façade. Where Rowling blogs on her website, Blyton wrote chatty letters about her life to her fans through magazines. They concealed as much as they revealed. When she divorced and remarried, the "Daddy" in her letters seemed unchanged. When her terrier, Bobs, died, she continued to write stories in his voice, and told her gardener not to mark his grave, in case a visiting child should stumble upon the truth.

If you're interested in either author, a must read -- I wish it had been longer.  Can anyone recommend a good Blyton biography?

(link via achockablog)

Comments

[Lillian]

Wow. My husband and I were just talking about Enid Blyton last night! She is my absolute favorite author from my childhood and is the reason why I fell head over heels in love with reading and started collecting books (and the reason why I wanted to be a librarian and, of course, the reason why I wanted to go to boarding school). For a class assignment when I was about 8, we were supposed to pick an author (or perhaps it was any famous person) to write a letter to. Enid Blyton was the only person I wanted to write to, and I was heartbroken when my teacher told me that she was dead, and had been for quite some time. I don't think I completed the assignment. I couldn't. Like I said, there was no one else.

[Vicki]

The only bio I'm aware of is Barbara Stoney's, which I have, and which I find very dry and have never been able to get through. If you find out about any others, please post them here.

[Mary]

I don't think there's another full-length biography besides the Stoney one, but from reading some shorter sketches in Contemporary Authors and the Dictionary of Literary Biography, I think she sounds like a pretty awful person. Kind of a Professor Umbridge type.

I also read some of her books earlier this summer. If I was partial to LSD, I probably would have liked them a whole lot. :)