Children's Books - Our Speciality

General Books:

January 2008

Enid Mary Blyton 1897 - 1968

The most commercially successful British children's author of the 20th Century. Blyton published her first book in 1922 and continued publishing stories until her death. The Magic Faraway Tree is still one of the best loved children's book and a whole generation lived the adventures of the Famous Five and the Secret Seven. Shelia Ray, in The Blyton Phenomenon (1982), reports that Blyton is still and overwhelmingly the most popular children's author in the eight to twelve age-group in Britain.

"The Oxford Companion to Children’s Literature." "Enid Blyton, A Biography by Barbara Stoney."

January 2007

We have pleasure in offering a selection of editions of W.E.Johns’ works. Many are now becoming extremely scarce and dust jackets almost impossible.

Captain W(illiam) E(arle) Johns 1893 - 1968. British author and creator of Biggles, served in the First World War then in 1916 he joined the then new Royal Flying Corps. He was shot down, wounded, taken prisoner and sentenced to death. He escaped, but was recaptured and spent the rest of the war in a prison camp. After the war, he became a newspaper air correspondent and founded the magazine Popular Flying, in the pages of which the Biggles stories first appeared. Johns also wrote about the adventures of a commando named Gimlet and about a female Biggles, Worrals of WAAF, who first appeared in print in 1941. These characters are said to have been invented at the instigation of the British Government who believed that they would help with the armed forces’ recruitment drive during the Second World War. Johns also wrote Science Fiction books of which there are ten.

"The Oxford Companion to Children’s Literature."