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Uncensored Enid Blyton Books Kept Under Counter in Public Libraries

by Toby Young
19 March 2023 7:05 PM

Enid Blyton is the latest beloved children’s author to be censored by the wokies – although, the censorship may have been going on for some time. MailOnline has more.

Enid Blyton’s classic novels are beloved globally but some of her works have been rewritten to remove ‘outdated’ language.

And uncensored versions are being placed in “off-limit storage spaces” in libraries to prevent the public from “stumbling upon” the old wording.

Recently edited works are displayed publicly across Devon’s libraries but tales which have not yet been amended are not so easy to access.

If a reader requests an original version of titles like The Famous Five, they will be shown a verbal trigger warning, according to the Telegraph.

The original versions are catalogued online and if a reader chooses to access one, a warning system will remind them of the language used within the older editions.

The changes were revealed in Devon County Council documents.

It was explained that Library Unlimited – which runs the council’s library service – regularly audits books, replacing them with altered versions.

The documents say that where popular titles contain “increasingly outdated” language, libraries purchase new, edited versions.

The off-limits area of libraries also contains books that have been removed due to staff or customer complaints – such as the autobiography of previously-incarcerated Tommy Robinson, the founder of the far-right English Defence League.

Blyton composed more than 700 books, including beloved titles like The Famous Five series and Noddy, from the late 1930s until she died in 1968.

But publishing house Hodder confirmed in 2010 that Blyton’s works would be refreshed in order to make them ‘timeless’.

In January last year, Jacqueline Wilson gave The Magic Faraway Tree a rewrite to remove “sexist expectations” of female characters, with domestic chores for the girls replaced with a lesson on gender equality.

And in February, Blyton’s Famous Five and Malory Towers books saw words such as ‘brown’ with reference to tanned faces, ‘queer’ and ‘gay’ changed to bring them up to date.

A description of “a brown-faced fisher-boy” was changed to a “suntanned fisher-boy”, while “Where’s George? She wants spanking” became “She wants a good talking to”.

English Heritage released updated blue plaque information in 2021 saying Blyton’s booked had been linked to “racism and xenophobia”.

Examples of ‘racism’ within the books include 1966’s The Little Black Doll, in which the main character ‘Sambo’ is only accepted by his owner “once his ‘ugly black face’ is washed ‘clean’ by rain”, while in Noddy, ‘golliwogs’ were changed to ‘goblins’.

English Heritage also now cites that publisher Macmillan refused to publish The Mystery That Never Was over its “old-fashioned xenophobia” towards foreign characters.

Dr. Byrn Harris, legal counsel for the Free Speech Union told the Telegraph: “We are bemused by the decision to treat the author of Noddy as dangerous and subversive samizdat.”

Worth reading in full.

I wonder how long it will be before the trans lobby claims George in The Famous Five as the first trans character in children’s fiction and Blyton is rehabilitated?

Tags: CensorshipEnid BlytonNoddyThe Famous FiveThe Magic Faraway Tree

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26 Comments
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Dinger64
Dinger64
2 years ago

“Where’s George? She wants spanking” became “She wants a good talking to”.

I’d sooner have a good spanking! 🤣

Last edited 2 years ago by Dinger64
38
-1
RW
RW
2 years ago

This is not amusing. This is an unchecked outburst of BTNHIWHDI!-syndrome seeking to destroy whatever cultural heritage these people can lay their hands on as that’s their only calling in live: Bereft of anything resembling creativity, the seek to hide this deficiency but turning everything into something so lame that even they could have come up with it.

[*] A software terminus technicus I invented. It means But that’s not how I would have done it! and usually manifests itself as rewriting of perfectly functional code in order to conform to someone’s function-free aesthetic preferences or factually unjustified technical prejudices.

44
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huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
2 years ago

“Uncensored Enid Blyton Books Kept Under Counter in Public Libraries”

That is bloody funny.

Enid Blyton up before the censors!

I suppose it had to happen. I probably read every Enid Blyton book as a nipper and those books so damaged my psyche I ended up ….

…here at DS.

A die-hard, right-wing, fascist, anti-liberal.

“Red ink for Blyton. NOW!!!!”

Last edited 2 years ago by huxleypiggles
76
-3
amanuensis
amanuensis
2 years ago

Note that there are books now out on the shelves and available for youngsters that wouldn’t have been available anywhere in the 1950’s, let alone ‘under the counter’.

Last edited 2 years ago by amanuensis
83
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Hugh
Hugh
2 years ago

But publishing house Hodder confirmed in 2010 that Blyton’s works would be refreshed in order to make them ‘timeless’.
In January last year, Jacqueline Wilson gave The Magic Faraway Tree a rewrite to remove “sexist expectations” of female characters, with domestic chores for the girls replaced with a lesson on gender equality.
And in February, Blyton’s Famous Five and Malory Towers books saw words such as ‘brown’ with reference to tanned faces, ‘queer’ and ‘gay’ changed to bring them up to date.
A description of “a brown-faced fisher-boy” was changed to a “suntanned fisher-boy”, while “Where’s George? She wants spanking” became “She wants a good talking to”.

No, Jacqueline Wilson, these changes do not make Blyton’s book timeless, but very much of this time, and in years to come the work of the “sensitivity readers” may come to look excruciatingly early 21st century.

I will say further that, just as there was a campaign to reclaim the cross of St. George from the far right, there now needs to be a campaign to reclaim the English language from the “far woke” and the psycho-babblers. I have related previously that I for one will refuse to use the euphemisms and made up words of these people (homophobe, straight, transgender etc.), and it seems to me a queer, sad world when “sensitivity readers” are instructed to butcher the sweet, gay stories of authors like Blyton. one dreads to think what will happen if these people come for poetry (indeed they arguably already have if you look at modern versions of some hymns).

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
   Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round;
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail:
And mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion

Five meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean;
And ’mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!

   The shadow of the dome of pleasure
 Floated midway on the waves;
   Where was heard the mingled measure
  From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

   A damsel with a dulcimer
   In a vision once I saw:
   It was an Abyssinian maid
   And on her dulcimer she played,
   Singing of Mount Abora.
   Could I revive within me
   Her symphony and song,
   To such a deep delight ’twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

14
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Sontol
Sontol
2 years ago

Used consistently the censorious / falsifying / ‘offense’ precluding approach being applied here would lead to the red-pen removal of every reference to slave cargoes in 18th century British shipping manifestoes and their replacement with barrels of whisky and crates of oranges.

In other words like all other tyrannical ideologies and movements this one destroys itself from within its own logic.

The fact is that Enid Blyton created timeless good versus evil fables (ie relatively defenceless children – plus Timmy the dog! – up against knife and gun festooned adult ‘wrong-uns’) – and that fundamental spiritual truth massively outweighs any relatively trivial archaic views on skin colour or gender roles (and even there Ms Blyton was relatively enlightened and broad minded).

Attempts to alter history are as dangerous as / fail in exactly the same way that lies about the present do.

Last edited 2 years ago by Sontol
27
-1
DomH75
DomH75
2 years ago

Enid Blyton was already banned from my school’s bookshelves when I started primary school in 1980. Enid Blyton is the reason I became an obsessive reader. I had an old suitcase I took from my grandparents’ loft that was full of my Mum’s and aunt’s childhood books. Most were Enid Blyton books. I blasted my way through the Secret Seven books, got in trouble for reading Famous Five books at the back of the classroom when I was seven. I loved the so-called ‘Barney Mysteries’, the ‘…of Adventure’ series, Mr Galliano’s Circus, and the Faraway Tree. My Mum used to go to a second hand book shop and pile me up with ever more Blyton books. I whooshed through them, often draining torch batteries as a result of reading under the bed clothes well into the night. I’ve still got many of those old hardbacks.

Blyton presented a world where good children and adults were responsible, well-disciplined and moral. The stories were romances (in the sense of romanticism): good versus evil. Self-reliance, good manners, quick thinking and decency won the day. It’s everything the moral relativists and closet paedophiles who control the culture of the postmodern age loathe. It’s also easy to dig into the work of an author as prolific as Enid Blyton and find occasional stories such as Sambo and try to use them to paint all of her work with the cancel-culture brush.

There were changes being made to Blyton’s books as early as the 1970s, possibly earlier – Dick and Fanny being renamed ‘Rick’ and ‘Franny’, for example – but the dirty work really started in the late 80s and early 1990s when Noddy was rewritten and redrawn and Secret Seven and Famous Five stories were rewritten to remove references to characters’ races and so on.

Enid Blyton has been the obsessive focus of the left for longer than just about any other children’s author. She’s ideologically opposed to their views and, worse, children still love her decades after her death. And shame on Jacqueline Wilson for being involved in eviscerating her work. Blyton has to stand next to Ayn Rand as the dead female 20th century author the left can’t get enough of hating.

I’ve said for a long time that we need a change in copyright law (and the Free Speech Union actually needs to campaign on this issue) so that if a rights holder wants to rewrite a dead author’s work in the 70 year copyright period – effectively holding the originals hostage – the books have to include a ‘retold by credit’ on the cover and the original text must immediately enter the public domain, so anyone can publish it. It’s the only way to ensure an authors true work can continue to be enjoyed by the generations to come.

52
0
huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
2 years ago
Reply to  DomH75

Excellent post.

8
0
Trev the Geek
Trev the Geek
2 years ago

I remember when all the ‘naughty’ books were kept on the top shelf. 😏

Anyway, here’s my favourite Blyton-esque joke (and topical too).
Why has Gary Lineker got big ears?
Because Noddy won’t pay the ransom.

Ba-dum-tisss 🥁

28
0
DevonBlueBoy
DevonBlueBoy
2 years ago
Reply to  Trev the Geek

🤣 🤣 🤣

6
0
Dinger64
Dinger64
2 years ago
Reply to  Trev the Geek

The BBC would pay it for him!🤣🤣

10
0
NeilParkin
NeilParkin
2 years ago

May I suggest an ‘update’ to another book, far out of date in language and content, ‘Das Capital’..?

9
0
Dinger64
Dinger64
2 years ago
Reply to  NeilParkin

How about ‘Mien Kampf’

6
0
Jon Garvey
Jon Garvey
2 years ago
Reply to  Dinger64

The thought of a sanitised and acceptable version of that book raises a smile. What a great challenge for a woke editor! I was going to suggest they have a do at de Sade, but chances are they’d find nothing that they wanted to change.

9
0
Dinger64
Dinger64
2 years ago
Reply to  Jon Garvey

Here’s a challenge! “1984” censoring that book would be the biggest contradiction in terms ever!🤐

9
0
RW
RW
2 years ago
Reply to  Jon Garvey

Doesn’t particularly fit in here (except that we absolutely can’t do without something anti-German for more than 5 minutes, can we?) but this has long since been done in Germany, namely, when the copyright of the original text expired and the so-called free state of Bavaria could no longer legally prevent other people from republishing it.

0
0
Dinger64
Dinger64
2 years ago
Reply to  RW

I regard those authors as nazis not germans. Germans are fine people!

3
0
Pembroke
Pembroke
2 years ago
Reply to  NeilParkin

The ultimate far out of date books are surely the Koran and the Bible (and other religious texts).

2
-2
Lockdown Sceptic
Lockdown Sceptic
2 years ago

Deliberately destroying childhood

Stand in the Park
Make friends & keep sane

Sundays 10.30am to 11.30am
Elms Field
near Everyman Cinema & play area
Wokingham RG40 2FE

14
-1
Jon Garvey
Jon Garvey
2 years ago

Noddy has been in the firing line for decades, as I remember. The worst thing about the series is its goblinism.

10
0
Dinger64
Dinger64
2 years ago
Reply to  Jon Garvey

I agree, Noddy doesn’t deserve all the years of goblinist hate speech he’s had to put up with!
And big ears! The amount of disgusting macrotism he had to suffer, well!

Last edited 2 years ago by Dinger64
4
0
Marque1
Marque1
2 years ago
Reply to  Jon Garvey

As a child I did not like Noddy because he did not say please and thankyou.

3
-1
BurlingtonBertie
BurlingtonBertie
2 years ago

Anyone else see a similarity between the 1930s book burnings & public library censorship?
Farenheit 451 happening without the public flames.

22
0
huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
2 years ago
Reply to  BurlingtonBertie

Spot on BB.

5
0
DomH75
DomH75
2 years ago
Reply to  BurlingtonBertie

Fahrenheit 451 didn’t anticipate digital books and the ability to hit ‘Delete’! The most terrible thing about the far left is that they can’t cope with the idea of something that has different views from them existing in the same world. It seems to cause them psychological trauma.

10
0
NeilParkin
NeilParkin
2 years ago

Very few titles, in percentage terms, are read 100 years after they were written. Should Sambo the Golliwog still feature in Noddy books.? Should every word, especially if they’ve fallen out of use, or changed in meaning like ‘queer’ be protected.?

I can see why people would suggest that, but this isn’t that. It is rewriting the books wholesale to change their meaning and message. I think people even as young as five can recognise that what happens in a story in a book isn’t real life. Knowing that ‘Sambo’ exists as a character in a book, but also knowing that you dont use the term for black people at school or in the street is a lesson in itself isn’t it.?

6
0

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