English author Enid Blyton — famed for children’s book series such as “Noddy” and “The Famous” Five” — and Rudyard Kipling — the “poet-champion of the British Empire” and the first English-language writer to get the Nobel Prize in Literature — are the latest authors to be censured by English Heritage, a charity that manages historical places.
The charity has updated its blue plaque website entry about Blyton to say her work “has been criticised for its racism, xenophobia and lack of literary merit”. It cited her story “The Little Black Doll” from 1966 where the doll’s face is washed “clean” by rain. It also wrote that publishers Macmillan in 1960 refused to publish her story “The Mystery That Never Was”, citing a “faint but unattractive touch of oldfashioned xenophobia”.
The move drew criticism from some on social media. “I refuse to accept any criticism of Enid Blyton,” tweeted writer Aseem Chhabra. “I refuse to cancel how my childhood was shaped, with thrilling adventures, mysteries.” Filmmaker Pooja Bhatt tweeted: “Like millions of readers whose imagination was fuelled by her books, there goes my childhood I guess.”
