Manybooks’s Reviews > Das Werk Enid Blytons: Eine Analyse ihrer Erfolgsserien in Westdeutschen Verlagen > Status Update

I just got the book yesterday (after having put a "want" for it on ABE books about two years ago), so I have only managed to briefly look at it. But, it does seem to be more of a study of Blyton's work (in German translation) than of the phenomenon. The problem with the German versions of the school stories (which are the only ones with which I am familiar) is that unless you know that, for example, the original St. Clare's stories only had six in total, there is no way for you to know that Blyton did not write the additional ones available in the German series (she is listed as the author).

I sometimes wonder wether some of the German literary critics (especially from the 70s and 80s, this book is from 1982) were/are even aware of the fact that some of the books in German series of Blyton's work are not penned by her, because whenever (as an example) the school series are mentioned in secondary works I have read, the analyses always seem to assume that even those novels I now know were not written by Blyton, are from her pen. I'll try to keep a running commentary on my reading status, the book does look very interesting.

This sounds like an interesting book Gundula. I too have read some books where they have multiple authors and sometimes I get confused about who wrote a certain article in the book because sometimes the article does not give the author's name until the end of the book where you read the credits, which I sometimes find too confusing because I like to see the author's name underneath the very article I am reading. Great status update!

Ronyell wrote: "This sounds like an interesting book Gundula. I too have read some books where they have multiple authors and sometimes I get confused about who wrote a certain article in the book because sometime..."

Ronyell, there seems to be a particular problem with some of the Enid Blyton series that have been translated into German. Like I said, the original St. Clare's series (about boarding school) consisted of six novels. The German series up to now features more than 20, with all but the first six obviously not written by Enid Blyton, but by anonymous German ghost writers. This would not be too much of a problem, but on the covers, it clearly states that Enid Blyton wrote "all" of these novels (which, of course, is incorrect, and, I think, dishonest).

Now, with this secondary book, the author is not only analysing the books Enid Blyton wrote herself (which were then translated into German), she is also analysing some of the books that I know were written by ghost writers, and she is analsying them as though they were written by Enid Blyton herself. Nothing wrong with analysing those books, but the author should make a distinction between those books originally written by Blyton and then translated into German, and the ones which were written maybe in the "Blyton style" by anonymous German ghost writers.