Posted by Peter Ceresole on December 23, 2005 at 06:20:15 from 80.177.22.49 user PeterC.
In Reply to: Re: Approaching Ransome posted by Paul on December 22, 2005 at 23:27:31:
Remember particularly WH at the end of CH5
"Softly, at first, as if it hardly meant it, the snow began to fall"
and his description at the very start of CH6 of the newly besnowed
landscape as seen from Dorothea's window.
I don't recall Blyton being able to "produce" that kind of English!
I'm not at all sure that she'd have wanted to. Those AR pleasures are rather more on the contemplative side. For me, now, they are exquisitely evocative. As a child, I preferred the story to get on with it.
I never read Blyton- there was always something in her stories that jarred for me. But for instance, Biggles hit the spot. For years, I read more WEJ than AR, but then I've not read a Biggles book since I was ten or eleven, while I have returned to AR simply for pleasure and for the subtleties, many of which just passed me by at the time. I'm not surprised that Blyton was the more popular author.