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.
The first book about Mollie, Peter and the Wishing-Chair, The Adventures of the Wishing-Chair, was published in 1937. It contained 36 chapters that had originally been serialised in Sunny Stories magazine during that year. In 1939 a new edition came out, reduced to 31 chapters. Editions from 1963 to 1968 had 27 chapters and the current edition has 26. In 1950 a second book, The Wishing-Chair Again, was published, having been serialised in Sunny Stories the previous year. In 2000, a new collection entitled More Wishing-Chair Stories was published, containing some of the removed chapters from the original edition of The Adventures of the Wishing-Chair as well as additional Wishing-Chair stories from Sunny Stories and the 1952 Enid Blyton Omnibus.
Minor editorial amendments have been made to the books over the years to bring text in line with the editorial standards above, including changing the name of the main pixie character to Binky in 2018.
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.