![]() Unfortunately this meant she spent all of her time writing and had little time to spend with her daughters or her husband. It was around the time her daughters were born that Enid's writing gained a wider audience and her career began to take off. Several stories, poems and articles were published in various periodicals and she was commissioned by one publisher to write a children's book about London Zoo. In the 1920s, Enid started to have some success with her writing. At about this time, she broke of all contact with her mother after their relationship deteriorated even further. She then taught for a year at a boys' school in Kent before going to work in Surrey as a governess for four boys. In 1916 Enid started to train as a teacher with the idea that this would help her understand the people for whom she wanted to write. ![]() Of course, her mother actively discouraged her writing but her schoolfriend, Mary, had an aunt, Mabel Attenborough, who became a good friend and encouraged Enid in her writing. She sent many stories off to publishers and received many rejection slips. Lonely without him and unhappy in her relationship with her mother, Enid retreated to her bedroom and spent every spare minute writing. ![]() WritingĮnid had always written and knew from an early age that she wanted to be a writer but it was when her father left that she really began to write in earnest. She preferred writing though and, as a teenager, spent less and less time on her music as she devoted more time to her writing. An intelligent girl who was fun to be with, she was popular and enjoyed school life.Įnid also had a talent for music and played the piano from a young age. The school accepted boarders but Enid attended as a day-girl. When she was ten, Enid started at a school in Beckenham called St Christopher's. She read books like Black Beauty and Little Women but loved myths, legends and poetry too. Enid also enjoyed card games and board games like Snakes and Ladders, Draughts and Chess. They pretended to be Red Indians, Burglars and Policemen and built cubby houses outdoors. In those pre-TV days, Enid and her brothers and friends played the games that all children liked to play. She had a good memory, was a bright student and did well at most subjects, especially art, nature study and English. The school was run by two sisters and Enid enjoyed her time there. When she was young, Enid went to a small school near her home called 'Tresco'. She forced her daughters to keep up this pretense until their father's death in 1920, even though they knew that Thomas was living with his mistress, Florence, with whom he had another family.Įnid visited her father at his office in London several times but their relationship was never as close as it had been. Enid seems to have seen her father's departure from the family home as a personal betrayal and her mother's approach to the situation didn't help.īecause separation and divorce were scandalous in England in 1910, Theresa never admitted to the break-up but told people that her husband was 'away on business'. It became even more difficult after Theresa and Thomas separated when Enid was not quite thirteen. In fact, Enid and her mother had nothing in common and their relationship was difficult, to say the least. Her mother didn't share these interests and disapproved of her husband and daughter's activities, mostly because she wanted Enid to help in the house. The Blyton family moved to Beckenham in Kent when Enid was a baby and she and her two younger brothers, Hanley and Carey, spent their childhood there.Įnid was very close to her father and together they enjoyed walks in the country, gardening, the theatre, art, music and literature. She was not at all keen on housework and this was to cause problems between mother and daughter. This probably seems like a strange thing to include in a page about Enid's life but it was to prove quite important because Enid, as she grew up, had very different interests from her mother. Enid would later write that her mother's life revolved around housework.
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