Editing Enid Blyton (section)

==Early writing career==
{{further|topic=works by Enid Blyton|Enid Blyton bibliography}}
In 1920, Blyton moved to [[Chessington]] and began writing in her spare time. The following year, she won the ''Saturday Westminster Review'' writing competition with her essay "On the Popular Fallacy that to the Pure All Things are Pure".{{Sfnp|Stoney|2011|loc=loc. 624–630|ps=none}} Publications such as ''[[The Londoner]]'', ''Home Weekly'' and ''[[The Bystander]]'' began to show an interest in her short stories and poems.{{R|EBSChrono}}

[[File:ChildWhispers.jpg|thumb|right|''[[Child Whispers]]'' (1922)]]
Blyton's first book, ''[[Child Whispers]]'', a 24-page collection of poems, was published in 1922.{{Sfnp|Stoney|2011|loc=loc. 624–630|ps=none}} Its illustrator, Enid's schoolfriend [[Phyllis Chase]] collaborated on several of her early works.{{Sfnp|Stoney|2011|loc=loc. 645|ps=none}} Also in that year, Blyton began writing in annuals for [[Cassell (publisher)|Cassell]] and [[George Newnes Ltd|George Newnes]], and her first piece of writing, "Peronel and his Pot of Glue", was accepted for publication in ''[[Teachers' World]]''. Further boosting her success, in 1923, her poems appeared alongside those of [[Rudyard Kipling]], [[Walter de la Mare]], and [[G. K. Chesterton]] in a special issue of ''Teachers' World.'' Blyton's educational texts were influential in the 1920s and 1930s, with her most sizable being the three-volume ''The Teacher's Treasury'' (1926), the six-volume ''Modern Teaching'' (1928), the eight-volume ''Pictorial Knowledge'' (1930), and the four-volume ''Modern Teaching in the Infant School'' (1932).{{Sfnp|Rudd|2004|p=112|ps=none}}

In July 1923, Blyton published ''Real Fairies'', a collection of thirty-three poems written especially for the book with the exception of "Pretending", which had appeared earlier in ''[[Punch (magazine)|Punch]]'' magazine.{{R|RealFairies}} The following year, she published ''The Enid Blyton Book of Fairies'', illustrated by Horace J. Knowles,{{Sfnp|Stoney|2011|loc=loc. 944–951|ps=none}} and in 1926 the ''[[Book of Brownies]]''.{{Sfnp|Stoney|2011|loc=loc. 3804|ps=none}} Several books of plays appeared in 1927, including ''A Book of Little Plays'' and ''The Play's the Thing'' with the illustrator [[Alfred Bestall]].{{Sfnp|Stoney|2011|loc=loc. 3810|ps=none}}

In the 1930s, Blyton developed an interest in writing stories related to various myths, including those of [[ancient Greece]] and [[ancient Rome|Rome]]; ''The Knights of the Round Table'', ''Tales of Ancient Greece'' and ''Tales of Robin Hood'' were published in 1930. In ''Tales of Ancient Greece'' Blyton retold 16 well-known ancient Greek myths, but used Latin rather than Greek names and invented conversations between characters.{{Sfnp|Brazouski|Klatt|1994|p=25|ps=none}} ''The Adventures of Odysseus'', ''Tales of the Ancient Greeks and Persians'' and ''Tales of the Romans'' followed in 1934.{{Sfnp|Commire|1981|p=57|ps=none}}