Posted on August 28, 2019 at 4:00 PM by Sadye Scott-Hainchek
The United Kingdom’s Royal Mint has blocked another commemorative coin to honor an author based on questions about racism.
Last fall, we learned that the Roald Dahl coin idea was rejected in 2014; this week, we learned that Enid Blyton was nixed in 2018.
Blyton, author of the Famous Five series and Malory Towers novels, “was known to have been a racist, sexist, homophobe and not a very well-regarded writer,” according to the mint’s advisory committee.
The racism complaints appear to be more clear-cut than the sexism and homophobia allegations; you can read the debate in The Week and make your own judgment.
The coin would've marked the fiftieth anniversary of Blyton's death (November 28, 1968); her books have continued to thrive long after her death, with over 400 million copies sold, according to Encyclopedia Britannica, and with her Malory Towers novels becoming a thirteen-part series for the Children's BBC.
Categories: Today in Books