Reviewing and editing the text of Enid Blyton’s books has been an ongoing process, beginning in her own lifetime and continuing now and, we anticipate, into the future. At Enid Blyton Entertainment (owners of the Enid Blyton estate and copyright, and part of Hachette UK), our intention is to keep Enid Blyton’s books and stories at the heart of every childhood, as they have been for generations. To do so, we work to ensure that there are no offensive terms in the books – changing words where the definition is unclear in context and therefore the usage is confusing, and where words have been used in an inappropriate or offensive sense – while retaining the original language as far as is possible. This enables a very wide international audience of children to enjoy the books, while also understanding that they were written and set in the past.
Five on a Treasure Island, the original book in the Famous Five series, was first published in 1942. Enid Blyton wrote a further twenty novels in the series, with one publishing every year until 1963. She also wrote eight short stories about Julian, Dick, Anne, George and Timmy.
We currently publish the full series in two editions: one with the original covers and interior artwork by Eileen Soper and one with new covers illustrated in 2017 by Pippa Curnick (with no interior artwork). In 2022, we reissued an edition of Five on a Treasure Island featuring cover artwork by Sir Quentin Blake, which was originally published in 2012.
The texts are identical in both our editions. They are the classic texts, with some minor editorial corrections made over the decades to bring the text in line with the editorial standards above. (A minor modernisation was carried out on The Famous Five in 2010 but these are no longer in print, and we reverted to our classic edition text in 2017.)
The eight short stories are available as individual colour-illustrated books for younger readers. These are the original stories, unabridged, except for Five Have a Puzzling Time, which has been abridged to align with the standard length of the other books in the colour readers series. There have also been two further Famous Five short stories written by Michelle Misra published in this format, with six more written by Sufiya Ahmed, two of which published in 2022, with two more to come in 2023 and two to follow in 2024.
There are graphic novel adaptations of the Famous Five books, published originally in France. The first two books, based on Five on a Treasure Island and Five Go Adventuring Again, were published in English in 2022.
In new editions of Enid Blyton books, we do not change language for the sake of modernising it. The books’ period setting is part of their charm and is enjoyed by readers of all ages. Any historic changes previously made to new editions, which come under the category of ‘modernisation’ in this context, have been or are being restored to the original text at the point of reprint.
