English Heritage calls Enid Blyton’s work “racist and xenophobic”


The prolific writer composed over 700 books after starting her first work in 1922 at 207 Hook Road, southwest London, in Chessington, where she worked as a housekeeper and where in 1997 a blue plaque was awarded was installed in his honor.

Information about the plaque provided online and on an English Heritage app indicates that Blyton’s work has been criticized “for its racism, xenophobia, and lack of literary merit.”

Visitors using the official app to learn more about the Blue Plates they encounter in London will be notified of the charges against Blyton’s work.

These include the 1966 book The Little Black Doll, with its main character “Sambo” having racist elements as the eponymous doll is only accepted by its owner once its “ugly black face” is washed. “clean” by the rain “.

The updated information from English Heritage also cites the occasion when its publisher Macmillan refused to publish his story The Mystery That Never Was because of its “slight but unattractive touch of old-fashioned xenophobia” , because the foreign characters were considered bad in the book.

Claims that Blyton was “not a highly regarded writer,” as the Mint’s committee for a commemorative coin suggested in 2016, have also been added to the information.

Prior to this update following Black Lives Matter’s protests, the information simply described Blyton’s career, which began when she wrote the Child Whispers poetry book while working as a housekeeper for Horace and Gertrude Thompson.

She became a prolific writer of bestsellers, including the hit series Secret Seven, The Famous Five, The Faraway Tree, Malory Towers and Noddy before her death in 1968.

The vast majority of its hundreds of posts were produced before 1960, and some features like the “Golliwogs” in Noddy were edited in later editions to become “Goblins”.


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