The Enchanted Wood was published by Newnes in 1939, and it is Blyton’s most purely imaginative creation — a fantasy world that operates by its own logic and that generations of children have accepted as real in the way that only children can accept fiction.
Jo, Bessie, and Fanny (names later changed to Joe, Beth, and Frannie in revised editions, and more recently to Rick, Beth, and Frannie) move to a house near an enchanted wood. In the wood they discover the Faraway Tree — an enormous tree inhabited by a cast of eccentric characters: Moon-Face (who lives at the top and has a slippery-slip running down the center of the trunk), the Saucepan Man (covered in pots and pans, perpetually mishearing everything), Silky the fairy, and Mr. Watzisname (who falls asleep in the middle of sentences). At the very top of the tree, different magical lands appear and disappear on a rotating schedule — the Land of Birthdays, the Land of Goodies, the Land of Topsy-Turvy — and the children must visit each land before it moves on, or risk being stranded.
The concept is brilliant in its simplicity and endlessly generative: each land is a self-contained adventure, and the rotating mechanism ensures that the stories never repeat. The enchanted wood itself — with its talking trees, whispering leaves, and sense of ancient, benign magic — is one of the most evocative settings in children’s literature, and Blyton describes it with a sensory vividness (the smell of toffee from the Land of Goodies, the sound of the tree humming) that is sometimes absent from her more formulaic work.
The book spawned two sequels — The Magic Faraway Tree (1943) and The Folk of the Faraway Tree (1946) — and has been adapted for stage and screen. The character names have been changed in recent editions (Dame Slap became Dame Snap, Fanny became Frannie), but the essential story remains unchanged.
Collecting The Enchanted Wood
First edition (Newnes, London, 1939): Illustrated boards, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $500–$2,000
- Without jacket: $60–$200
- Wartime impressions: $30–$100
- Modern reprints: $5–$10