Thursday, October 18, 2007
Rowling vs. Blyton
On the Enid Blyton Society forums as well as here on my own message board and Talk About Blyton sections, readers are constantly comparing Enid Blyton to J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series.
WHY??
Aside from the vaguely similar idea of kids at a boarding school (and I'm really only thinking of Malory Towers and St. Clare's here, not Enid Blyton in general) I don't really see that the works of Rowling can be "compared" in any useful way to the works of Blyton. Okay, so Blyton wrote a number of fantasy stories, in particular the Faraway Tree and Wishing Chair books, but these are a far cry from the serious and young adult nature of the Potter series. Malory Towers would probably be a better comparison, but where are the wizards? The strange creatures? The creepy ghost-like minions of a dark, twisted, top-security prison? The evil, once-dead dark lord who just wants to kill people all the time? Sorry, but plot-wise there's really no comparison between Enid Blyton's and J. K. Rowling's books.
What if you compare the authors themselves? Okay. J. K Rowling has written seven books. Enid Blyton has literally hundreds to her name, with five thousand short stories. Hmm, not much similarity there! Right, what about popularity then? Ah, now we're talking. Rowling has been translated into "more than 64 languages" (says Wikipedia) and Blyton into "over 40" (says Chorion). These are pretty impressive statistics, but not as impressive as Agatha Christie with "an estimated one billion copies of her novels sold in English, and another billion in 103 other languages" (says Wikipedia).
Agatha Christie blows everyone out of the water. But let's stick with Rowling and Blyton, since they're the ones that are often compared. According to Wikipedia, "As of April 2007, the first six [Harry Potter] books have sold more than 325 million copies... The seventh and last book in the series was released on 21 July 2007 [with] a record-breaking 12 million copies for the first print run in the U.S. alone."
Enid Blyton, on the other hand, has "sold 400 million books worldwide. Approximately one half of her titles are still in print but are selling more than 10 million copies annually."
Rowling's sales are much, much faster than Blyton's, and it won't be long before Rowling tops Blyton for overall book sales worldwide — not bad when you consider that Harry Potter started in 1997 (exactly 10 years ago) and the Famous Five, along with many other series that are still selling today, started in the early forties (over 65 years ago).
The only comparison I can see between the two authors is their incredible success. I wonder how much more successful Blyton would have been if her career had started or continued into the 1990s. What if big budget movies had been made of her more popular series? The problem is that it's hard to imagine a movie about the Famous Five or the Five Find-Outers being anywhere near as impressive on a big screen as the magical world of Hogwarts — because Enid Blyton's most popular books were all about ordinary children in ordinary settings. These series are just not big screen material.
I think the Faraway Tree books are big screen material though; they should be produced in the same lavish, colorful, family-rated style as the recent Charlie and the Chocolate Factory movie starring Johnny Depp. Now THAT would be a series worth adapting for the big screen; just imagine the huge Enid Blyton signature plastered across the screen at the beginning along with "The Enchanted Wood" in cool fantasy-style lettering. The story would unfold to a soundtrack by Danny Elfman, under the direction of Tim Burton... and all three movies would of course be a phenomenal success, generating millions upon millions of new books sales across the world.
Perhaps THEN we could start to make some decent comparisons between the works of Rowling and Blyton.
Update: It's worth noting that, according to the Index Translationum Statistics, Enid Blyton presently ranks number SIX in the world after Disney, Agatha Christie, Jules Verne, The Works of Lenin, and William Shakespeare. J. K. Rowling is nowhere to be seen. This is because the statistics report overall numbers of translated books per author, so Enid Blyton's 3433 translations is spread over her entire bibliography. For example, 21 Famous Five books translated into just ten languages is a score of 210 out of the 3433. The Famous Five are translated into a lot more than ten languages, but if you split the 3433 total between, say, 400 books that have and are still being published and translated today, that's an average of eight or nine translations per book. Poor J. K. Rowling only has seven books to her name, so each would need to be translated 165 times or so just to get onto the top 50 "most translated" list.
This post has 5 comments
Blyton apparently fared badly in the US market whereas Rowling didn't. That would make a huge difference in a sales comparison.
Blyton can certainly be compared to A. Ransome who wrote 10 years earlier. A read of Swallows & Amazons will show how many ideas were, um, borrowed. Ransome is also the perfect antidote to Rowling's potions & black magic with the only 'dragon' being Captain Nancy Blackett [ Terror of the Seas ] who is a Tomboy's tomboy. It's low key but impressive writing. Also on film.
I think the similarity of them are that they are female and both worked as authors. I'm not making Rowling sounds bad, I like Harry Potter series too, but they are not the same. I think, EB is still the best because she had one thousand and one challenges before she won every child's heart. It's unfair if you compare an author who only wrote ten books, more or less. EB is a classic author, and her books are in all kinds. Rowling's books are not boring, Ming, if you read them alright. I like her books, but the comparison has zero point. EB is someone, who people called the queen of writing. I AM SURE her crown will never be replaced by anyone. I should never think anyone replacing her someday.
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