Controversies
Cover of The Three Golliwogs, in which the golliwogs are the heroes.The books are very much of their time, particularly the 1950s titles. They reflect a none-too-subtle version of Britain's class system, as in rough versus well-behaved. Undoubtedly present are some stereotypes on gender. Some argue, from a current perspective, that the portrayal of golliwogs, amongst others, was racist. On the other hand, the Famous Five displayed a remarkably modern equality of teamwork between the sexes, and while golliwogs often appeared as villains in the Noddy books, elsewhere in her fantasy works they appeared as the heroes.
It was frequently reported, in the 1950s and also from the 1980s onwards, that various children's libraries removed some of Blyton's works from the shelves. The history of such 'Blyton bans' is confused. Some librarians certainly at times felt that Blyton's restricted use of language, a conscious product of her teaching background, militated against appreciation of more literary qualities. There was some precedent, in the treatment of L. Frank Baum's Oz books (and the many sequels, by others) by librarians in the USA in the 1930s.
Much play has been made of naive language permitting double entendre (e.g. a tendency to imagine sexual connotations, for instance, Noddy "jumping into bed" with Big Ears, another character, clearly not intended by the author). This is probably journalistic froth. This whole area is subject to urban myths and the carefree retelling in newspapers of anecdotes as factual (recycling the old press cuttings, in fact) making it somewhat difficult to discern the truth.
A more careful account of anti-Blyton attacks is given in Chapter 4 of Robert Druce's This Day Our Daily Fictions. The British Journal of Education in 1955 carried a piece by Janice Dohn, an American children's librarian, considering Blyton's writing together with authors of formula fiction, and making negative comments about Blyton's devices and tone. A 1958 article in Encounter by Colin Welch, directed against the Noddy character, was reprinted in a New Zealand librarians' periodical. This gave rise to the first rumour of a New Zealand 'library ban' on Blyton’s books, a recurrent press canard. Policy on buying and stocking Blyton's books by British public libraries drew attention in newspaper reports from the early 1960s to the end of the 1970s, as local decisions were made by a London borough, Birmingham, Nottingham and other central libraries. There is no evidence that her books' popularity ever suffered. She was defended by populist journalists, and others; left-of-centre newspapers ran articles condemning her work, with a piece in 1966 in The Guardian claiming that Blyton wrote more insidiously dangerous right-wing literature than that published by British fascist groups.
Modern reprints of some books have had changes made (such as the replacement of Golliwogs with teddy bears). This is the publishers' reaction to contemporary attitudes on racial stereotypes, and probably enforced by market conditions and pressure groups. It has itself drawn criticism from those adults who view it as tampering with an important piece of the history of children's literature. The Druce book brings up a single case of a story, The Little Black Doll, which could be interpreted as a racist message (the doll wanted to be pink) and which was turned on its head in a reprint.
