The Famous Five and the Autotopographical Two: Interpreting Blyton Across Differences of Time, Space, and Race

Abstract

This article presents a small case study of two childhood readers of Enid Blyton’s Famous Five series, who meet in a research project devoted to a different but related topic. One is Indian by birth and background, the other, Canadian. Their experience of this series is separated by distance (many thousands of miles), time of reading (nearly fifty years), and divergent racial and cultural perspectives. Yet both include Blyton in what Alison Waller calls a “lifelong reading act,” and both recall the experience as one involving enthusiastic personal engagement coupled with the questions and assumptions of an outsider to the Englishness of the books. Their common experiences and memories provide a language for exploration that sheds light on many components of the experience of reading fiction. Their responses to online images of the Five’s favourite location for adventure, Kirrin Island, showcase both commonalities and distinctions in reading processes. Three themes are explored in depth: reading as an outsider, good enough imagining, and the interactions of reading and memory.