THE FAMOUS FIVE - A VANISHED AGE...

Copyright HODDER & STOUGHTON Ltd

Did any of you Crivs ever read Enid Blyton's The Famous Five books when you were younger?  The group's name 'Famous Five' was tacked on later, the original story titles being just 'Five On A Treasure Island', etc.  A while back I bought a boxed set of the first ten books (there being 21 in all, not counting short stories) and eventually worked my way through them - perhaps not something to which I should admit to all you adults out there.  It later occurred to me that I'd probably read more of the Five's adventures as a 'grown up' than I ever did as a kid, and the realisation took me somewhat by surprise.

How many did I actually read in my childhood, towards the end of my primary school days and perhaps, possibly, maybe, even into my first year in secondary?  Know what, I can't remember with any certainty, but it was probably no more than about four or five at most - if even that.  Yet somehow I have the impression that the Five (Julian, Dick, Anne, George, and Timmy the dog) and their intrepid excursions into mystery, intrigue, and even danger, were a significant feature of my life at that time.  Funny that, eh?  It's similar to thinking back to childhood TV shows and feeling that we regularly watched every episode instead of the occasional 'dipping in' that was more likely to be the case.

I have to say that I was surprised about just how absorbing and thrilling the books are, as I really only bought them out of a sense of nostalgia, with no real intention of reading (or dipping into) any more than one, two at the most.  My sense of expectation was therefore not very high, but dated as they are (despite some mild revisions designed to obscure the fact), they're a 'jolly good' read.  Revisions?  Yes, such things as old money (pounds, shillings, and pence) changed to decimal currency, and shorts turned into jeans, but despite these changes, one is still swept along by the force of Enid Blyton's imagination and storytelling skill.

The books I have are copyright 2016, though based on the text from editions published in 1997, so they don't include further amendments instituted after that date, of the sort that have been publicised in the news recently.  To be frank, I think it's a waste of time making any changes at all, as the stories should be regarded as 'time capsules', capturing a vanished age as if in amber.  They can change 'shorts' to 'jeans' and 'shillings' to 'pence' all they want, but the absence of any mention of mobile 'phones, computers, iPads and the like, means that the stories still read like something not quite anchored in the here and now.  Also, the original illustrations (by Eileen A. Soper) usually portray the Five in jackets (or pullovers) and shorts, not jerseys and jeans as in the revised text.

Using the original drawings tends to suggest that the publishers are straddling the fence by trying to cater to the nostalgia market as well as young readers of today, because if they're going to update the text, it would surely be better to have new illos more in keeping with the modern age*.  I say 'surely be better' from the publisher's viewpoint, but frankly I'm glad they kept Soper's drawings, even if some of them are a bit ropey.  And they don't seem to have thought things through properly, as in one instance, the revised text describes one character as wearing jeans, then goes on to say that her legs are tanned from the sun.  Remember though, she's wearing jeans, so mentioning the colour of her shins is surely redundant.  Obviously, the discrepancy didn't exist when the unaltered text matched the illustrations.

(*Some previous editions from a good few years back do have more contemporary drawings, but [to my eyes] the '50s 'flavour' of the tales is somewhat compromised by their inclusion.)

Had it been left to me, I'd have retained the original text and simply had a note at the beginning of the books saying that they were written in the '50s before the invention of mobile 'phones, computers, and all the other accoutrements of modern technology.  Once the readers understand the context, they'd have no problem immersing themselves in adventures set in a time known better to their grandparents than to themselves.  And think of the things they'd learn in the process.  Education as well as entertainment - the best of both worlds.

Somewhere in this overstuffed house of mine are three or four hardback FF (no, Melvin, not Fantastic Four) books published in the '50s and '60s, one of which may be the original copy I had at the time (late '60s), the remaining ones being obtained from jumble sales in the '80s or '90s.  I can't help wondering if I'd have found the stories as enjoyable if I'd been reading them for the first time as an adult, without the pre-existing sense of familiarity with the characters from my childhood.  True, I may never have read the majority of the tales back then, but I feel I know the characters and that they're contemporaries from that period, and that I was simply continuing a journey begun in my youth, with friends I hadn't seen for a while.  That make any sense?   

Anyway, thought you might like to see the covers of the first ten books.  Feel free to comment if you find yourselves inclined.