Enid Blyton has been named the United Kingdom’s best-loved writer, beating Harry Potter creator JK Rowling into third place and leaving literary giants such as Shakespeare, Jane Austen and Charles Dickens trailing. Blyton, creator of the Famous Five books as well as the Secret Seven, Malory Towers and Noddy, topped a poll of 2,000 adults for the 2008 Costa Book Awards.
There was an extremely strong showing for fantasy authors, with Roald Dahl, JRR Tolkien and Stephen King all making the top ten.
Philip Pullman, the author of the His Dark Materials trilogy, does not appear in the top 50. Other notable omissions include Ian Fleming, the author of the James Bond series, the Winnie the Pooh author A A Milne, Iris Murdoch and the Bridget Jones’s Diary author Helen Fielding. The survey of 2,000 adults was commissioned by One Poll, the internet market research company, to mark the 2008 Costa Book Awards.
The United Kingdom’s top ten authors
- Enid Blyton
- Roald Dahl
- JK Rowling
- Jane Austen
- William Shakespeare
- Charles Dickens
- JRR Tolkien
- Agatha Christie
- Stephen King
- Beatrix Potter