Tag Archives: Eileen Soper

Enid Blyton’s Holiday Stories then and now, part 6

Nearly half-way through, now. Previous parts look at story 1, stories 2 and 3, stories 4 and 5, stories 6 and 7, and stories 8 to 10. The Donkey on the Sands Originally published in Sunny Stories #192 in 1940. … Continue reading

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Monday #524

Last week I did sit down, more than once, to write about Blyton’s best holiday locations. But somehow I just couldn’t get it written. I got myself a bit tied up trying to work out how much the locations could … Continue reading

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Enid Blyton’s Holiday Stories then and now, part 4

I would like to say that I am whizzing through these short stories but in reality it’s more of a steady plod. Which is fine! Reading each sentence of every story twice does take up quite a lot of time, … Continue reading

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Monday #522

Happy Easter Monday, everyone. I hope you all had a good Easter weekend. Ours was fun, if rather cold! My favourite stand alone titles and Enid Blyton’s Holiday Stories part 4 20 short stories from the 1930s, and around 96 … Continue reading

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Enid Blyton’s Holiday Stories then and now, part 3

I have looked at the first three stories so far, and there were quite a lot of changes in the two I was able to compare. Let’s see what the next few stories bring. A Surprise for Jimmy This is … Continue reading

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Enid Blyton’s Holiday Stories then and now, part 2

In part one I briefly looked at At Seaside Cottage – the first story in the Hodder collection of Enid Blyton’s Holiday Stories. I’m not sure how many stories I will get through in this post – I suppose it … Continue reading

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The Five as you’ve never seen them before, part 4

With Eileen Soper being such a prolific illustrator for Blyton it’s not hard to find her work amongst the books on my shelves. So here are another few times she drew characters that look just like the Five, even though … Continue reading

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Enid Blyton’s Holiday Stories, then and now

In case you missed it, I’ve recently read Enid Blyton’s Holiday Stories – the 2015 Hodder collection – to Brodie at bedtimes. This is the first in what will probably be a reasonably long series of posts as I half-review … Continue reading

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Five Are Together Again part 4

Finally, I have reached the post with the promised nitpicks, of which there are many. Random points This one’s set at Easter, as was Mystery to Solve so it’s a full year later. It makes sense for them to have … Continue reading

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The Five as you have never seen them before, part 3

I’ve done a couple of posts already, each showing a few illustrations by Eileen Soper which although look like they could be depicting the Five are in fact from other books entirely. So here’s another one! (Soper was quite prolific … Continue reading

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My favourite Blyton covers part one

Having done some posts on the worst and most misleading covers lately I thought it was time to balance that out with a celebration of some of the covers that I love. I’m not going to rank them in order, … Continue reading

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Monday #455

For those of you who love Five Get Into a Fix and were eagerly awaiting my review (I like to at least pretend there are people out there that feel that way about my blog, OK?) I’m sorry it failed … Continue reading

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Monday #440

It is September and yet the sun is still shining (for now, at least!). Kirrin Holidays brochure from Travel Blyton and Cunningham and Petrov: The Mystery of the Missing Children chapter 20.5* (I don’t have The Mountain of Adventure to … Continue reading

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Monday #429

I’m sure none of you have missed the furore over what English Heritage said about Blyton this week, but I thought I would express my thoughts on it this week anyway, which means it’s going to be a bumper week … Continue reading

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Five Go to Mystery Moor part 3

Here we are for part three of what should have been a two part post. Part one was a general review of the plot, and part two was entirely taken over by George and Henry. So, part three is all … Continue reading

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The Five as you have never seen them before, part 2

Recently I posted some illustrations by Eileen Soper that look like members of the Famous Five but are actually from short stories. Here are some more, this time from the Hodder Story Books (Happy, Merry and so on). Anne and … Continue reading

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The Five as you have never seen them before

Eileen Soper’s Five are the real Five to me. I grew up seeing her illustrations in lots of my Famous Five books and although I also had some Betty Maxey books too, I always picture Julian, Dick, Anne, George and … Continue reading

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Eileen Soper at Christmas

It’s no secret that Eileen Soper is my favourite Blyton illustrator. She is best known for her work on the 21 Famous Five books, both the covers and internal illustrations, but she also illustrated lots of short story collections, a … Continue reading

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The Secret Series covers through the years

I recently looked at the different covers used for the Famous Five books and The Adventure Series. One series. Five books. Four cover artists. The Secret Series is perhaps unusual due to how many different cover artists the series had. While … Continue reading

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The Famous Five covers through the years, part 1: 1940s-1990s

The Famous Five books have been in print for nearly 80 years now, and along the way they have appeared with a lot of different looks from the original Eileen Soper covers to TV tie-ins and famous illustrators. We will … Continue reading

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