I'm working through a secondhand collection of Blyton stories and I know there will be more Brer Rabbit stories - not sure how I feel about that right now! According to the Index Translationum, Blyton was the fifth most popular author in the world in 2007, coming after Lenin but ahead of Shakespeare. Unfortunately ( or rather, fortunately ) I’ve hit a bit of a reading streak and am finishing books incredibly quick. One was in children’s author John Goldthwaite’s 1996 book, The Natural History of Make-Believe, and the other was literary critic Peter Hollindale’s (unpublished) lecture, Uncle Remus and Peter Rabbit, at the Beatrix Potter Society’s 2003 annual general meeting.

Blyton was a prolific author of children's books, who penned an estimated 800 books over about 40 years.Hollindale argued in his lecture that this may have been because she “misunderstood her own talent and, to the end of her life, was afraid of being caught out as a cheat”. They are pretty funny in the middle because he has an idea and says ‘just don’t throw me in’, then he does and at the end, he’s escaped. I feel like I read this one a lot as a kid, yet I had only super vague recollections of the stories as I made my way through. I grew up with this Enid Blyton series of short stories set on a smart rabbit's adventures against an evil fox (see the modern version of Peter rabbit). The stories are light and breezy and there's great fun to be had in guessing how Brer Rabbit's and the other characters' tricks will play out, and who will come out on top as they trick each other and trick each other again.

I guess jumping over to a random Enid Blyton book after reading a very heavy book on the Vietnam War doesn't necessarily relax you, particularly if you find the book that you have jumped over to to be complete and utter rubbish. Unfortunately I'm pretty sure no financial compensation ever filtered back to the people where Harris heard the original stories.In 'Brer Rabbit and Mister Lion', the latter is trapped in a cave and reluctantly Brer Rabbit helps him escape. The only redeeming feature about this book was the story about how Mr Lion went to a restaurant to have some soup, and then said he couldn't eat it. These popular stories, with their English country garden settings and precise illustrations, have been stalwarts of British children’s bookshelves over the past century. It will only be then that people realise how completely reprehensible some of Brer Rabbits 'tricks' are.

Copies of Harris’s Brer Rabbit folktale collections, bearing her father’s bookplate, were found at Potter’s home in the Lake District after she died in 1943. I was amazed to realise how little comment there has been over the years about the many similarities between Potter’s tales and the Africa-originated Brer Rabbit folktales”, Zobel Marshall said. Notable series include: The Famous Five, The Secret Seven, The Five Find-Outers, Noddy, The Wishing Chair, Mallory Towers, and St. the subject has a whip which he cracks and pretends it is a gun and that he is shooting suspected robbers; all the other Brer animals run for cover in the woods.Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. Do all human cultures share stories with similar basic elements, which manifest themselves as expressions of basic human needs? A fun tale of a mischievous little rabbit; a great story for anyone who is looking to appease their inner child! Now, this little trip down memory lane was truly amazing, I recommend everyone go and revisit their childhood bookshelves and pick out a comforting book, whether you read from cover to cover or simply flip through it. Volumes could, and have, been written on this fascinating subject but the good news is that absolutely none of it need pass through your mind as you read and enjoy Enid Blyton's wonderful Brer Rabbit.

Brer Rabbit is a character who seems to make it his business to make the lives of his friends and foes in the animal kingdom a misery, by constantly pulling pranks on them and generally doing them out of something, most usually their food. I loved this book and couldn't stop laughing at all the clever tricks that brainy Brer Rabbit used to get the better of gullible Brer Wolf, Brer Fox and Brer Bear amongst others!British author Enid Blyton, creator of The Famous Five, The Secret Seven and Noddy, started retelling the stories in the 1930s, with this volume coming out in 1963.