Claude Voilier


Claude Voilier was a French teacher, journalist, translator, and a prolific author, having written over 600 short stories for various French magazines, and about 400 stories for children. In the English-speaking world, she is best known for her continuation of Enid Blyton's The Famous Five series of children's adventure novels.
Claude Voilier was born Andrée Labedan around 1930. She wrote two popular novels for children, Le Manoir des cinq preux and Celle qu'on retrouva. She was living in Arcachon, France, at the time of her death in May 2009.

Voilier's Famous Five series

Starting from the early 1970s, and continuing up to the mid-1980s, Voilier wrote a series of books based on Enid Blyton's Famous Five series. The series comprises 24 books, 18 of which have been translated into English by Anthea Bell. Voilier had translated some of the later Blyton Famous Five books into French, and this was a major reason why she was asked to continue the series.
The numbering of the English translations is quite different from the French order. There follows a list of the original French series, with English titles where applicable. The 18 English titles will then be listed in their series order.

Original French Famous Five series

The original French Famous Five series by Claude Voilier was published by Bibliothèque Rose, a division of the giant French publishing house Hachette. Jean Sidobre illustrated the first 12 as well as the penultimate volume. Claude Pascal illustrated a further seven. Buci illustrated Les Cinq contre les fantômes and Anne-Claude Martin illustrated Les Cinq en Amazonie and Les Cinq contre le loup-garou.
In the original hardback editions, the books do not have chapters, and every second page has a comic strip-style illustration that sums up the main action in the text on the opposite page. The comics are one to three panels in length. Most of these illustrations are in black and white, but every so often there is a single-panel full-page colour illustration. However, later paperback editions published in the 1990s dispense with the comics and instead use black-and-white illustrations by Anne Bozellec. These illustrations only appear at intervals rather than on every second page. The paperback editions are also divided into chapters.
A full list of the original French series follows below:
1. Les Cinq sont les plus forts
2. Les Cinq au bal des espions
3. Le Marquis appelle les Cinq
4. Les Cinq au Cap des tempêtes
5. Les Cinq à la Télévision
6. Les Cinq et les pirates du ciel
7. Les Cinq contre le masque noir
8. Les Cinq et le galion d'or
9. Les Cinq font de la brocante
10. Les Cinq se mettent en quatre
11. Les Cinq dans la cité secrète
12. La fortune sourit aux Cinq
13. Les Cinq et le rayon Z
14. Les Cinq vendent la peau de l'ours
15. Les Cinq aux rendez-vous du diable
16. Du neuf pour les Cinq
17. Les Cinq et le trésor de Roquépine
18. Les Cinq et le diamant bleu
19. Les Cinq jouent serré
20. Les Cinq en croisière
21. Les Cinq contre les fantômes
22. Les Cinq en Amazonie
23. Les Cinq et le trésor du pirate
24. Les Cinq contre le loup-garou

The series in English

18 of the titles were translated into English by Anthea Bell and published in paperback by Knight Books. They were subsequently published again in the early 1990s by Hodder and Stoughton. The Hodder editions have slightly revised titles; instead of e.g. "The Famous Five and the Strange Legacy", the Hodder editions say "The Five and the Strange Legacy" etc., which is closer to the original French.
The formatting is rather different from the French series, in that the translated versions have chapters. The Knight editions also have a number of illustrations that are loosely based on the French style. They are full-page, in black and white and have one or two panels. They are not as ubiquitous as in the French versions however, and are not really in a true comic-strip style. Illustrations were omitted entirely from the Hodder editions.
A complete list of the English titles is given below:
1. The Famous Five and the Stately Homes Gang
2. The Famous Five and the Mystery of the Emeralds
3. The Famous Five and the Missing Cheetah
4. The Famous Five Go on Television
5. The Famous Five and the Golden Galleon
6. The Famous Five Versus the Black Mask
7. The Famous Five in Fancy Dress
8. The Famous Five and the Blue Bear Mystery
9. The Famous Five and the Inca God
10. The Famous Five and the Cavalier's Treasure
11. The Famous Five and the Strange Legacy
12. The Famous Five and the Secret of the Caves
13. The Famous Five and the Hijackers
14. The Famous Five and the Strange Scientist
15. The Famous Five in Deadly Danger
16. The Famous Five and the Knight's Treasure
17. The Famous Five and the Z-Rays
18. The Famous Five and the Pink Pearls

Possible 25th volume

In 1996, a book written by Claude Voilier and illustrated by Anne Bozellec, entitled Les Cinq et le secret du vieux puits, was published and may constitute the 25th volume in the series. However, from the rather scant information available about the book, it appears as though it may be little more than a rewrite or updated translation of Le Club des Cinq et le vieux puits, which is the French version of Five Have a Mystery to Solve, the 20th book in Enid Blyton's original The Famous Five series. So unlike the first 24 volumes of the Voilier series, it is almost certainly not a truly new story and hence should probably be classified as being among the French translations of Blyton's series.

The Three Investigators connection

Claude Voilier has translated some volumes of The Three Investigators series into French. One of the stories in this series, The Mystery of the Silver Spider, is set in the fictitious country of Varania. In The Famous Five and the Strange Scientist, the character of Professor Kolkov comes from Varania, which makes for an interesting little crossover connection between the French Famous Five series and The Three Investigators series.

Useful links and references

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