This Day, That Year – September 11

This day in history we feature The Famous Five. Enid Blyton’s first book in this series, ‘Five on a Treasure Island’ was published on this day in 1942.

Trivia – The Famous Five

The Famous Five is a series of children’s adventure novels and short stories written by English author Enid Blyton. And the first book was Five on a Treasure Island. The novels feature the adventures of a group of young children – Julian, Dick, Anne, Georgina (George) and her dog Timmy. The first edition of the book was illustrated by Eileen Soper. It has been suggested that the book was influenced by L. T. Meade’s 1892 book Four on an Island, which also recounts a story of four related children including a tomboy along with a dog living on a private island with a shipwreck.

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Blyton also wrote a number of short stories featuring the characters, which were collected together in 1995 as Five Have a Puzzling Time, and Other Stories. Blyton intended to write only six or eight books in the series, but owing to their high sales and immense commercial success she went on to write twenty-one full-length Famous Five novels, as well as a number of other series in similar style following groups of children discovering crime on holiday. By the end of 1953, more than six million copies had been sold. Today, more than two million copies of the books are sold each year, making them one of the best-selling series for children ever written, with sales totalling over a hundred million. All the novels have been adapted for television, and several have been adapted as films in various countries.

Source – Wikipedia

This day in history –