Previous letters pages can be found here.

Letters page from Volume 2, issue 24.
November 24th – December 7th, 1954.

OUR

LETTER PAGE

 1. A letter from Pauline Dove, Pickering, York.
Dear Enid Blyton,
I am sending the enclosed 5s. for the little Home for Children. I earned it by doing “Penny Jobs” for Mummy and Daddy. For one or two bigger jobs, such as washing the van down I got 6d. I do love reading the Enid Blyton Magazine, and try to enter for all the F.F. competitions
Love from
Pauline

(Thank you for a nice little letter, Pauline. I meant to print it before, and mislaid it – but it has turned up again!)

2. A letter from Elizabeth Pring, Fitzpaine, Taunton.
Dear Enid Blyton,
When our chickens were tiny one of them hurt its leg. We all thought it was going to die. Auntie brought it in and put it in a basket with food and water, and put it on top of the stove. She put the chicken’s leg in a poultice. Now Clara, as we call her, is in a run of her own. My Auntie said I could look after her, and now she lays an egg every day.
Yours truly,
Elizabeth Pring

(A most interesting letter, Elizabeth, I did enjoy reading it.)

3. A letter from “The Three Magazine Readers,” who are asked please to send me their addresses.
Dear Enid Blyton,
Two friends and I decided to make some lavender bags in order to raise money for your Children’s Home. We made £1 2s., which we are sending to you.
Three Magazine Readers

(Thank you! You are very kind – but do tell me your names!)

4. A letter from a mother this time – the mother of Katharine Wood, Sheffield 10.
Dear Enid Blyton,
My daughter, Katharine, wishes me to send her Teddy Bear for one of the little ones in your Home, and we hope it will give as much pleasure as we have had from him. He has been to the cleaners so he is quite all right.
Yours sincerely,
M. Wood

(I get so many letters from mothers that I thought I must print this one. Thank you very much!)

Another week with four letters – which have gone back to being numbered!

Another money-raising letter in the top spot but it is Blyton’s reply that is most interesting. A tiny glimpse into her life as magazine author/editor. It implies that she did indeed receive and read the letters sent to her – she did publicise her home address openly after all! (I can’t imagine many authors doing that today.) I can just picture her looking for the letter she had chosen, but not being able to find it, only for it to turn up again later. Perhaps in a drawer? In amongst another pile of letters? Fallen down the back of a desk? We will never know but it somehow makes her seem even more real as a person.

I admit Elizabeth’s letter did not go the way I thought it was – I was skim reading and Auntie put the chicken on the stove top with water… I was picturing her boiling it and serving it for dinner!

I wonder why Blyton wants the names and addresses of the three anonymous readers – did she send thank you notes or badges to everyone who sent her funds? (Oh to have been alive at the right time so that I could have written into her magazine!)

And lastly a letter from a mother. There was another a few weeks back – but Blyton says she gets a lot of them. That could be a whole separate letters page – I wonder what they wrote about. Did they ask for advice about their children? Or ask her to stop writing so much as they are going bankrupt trying to keep up with buying all the books?