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Elizabeth Peabody

Elizabeth Palmer Peabody (May 16, 1804 – January 3, 1894) was an American educator who opened the first English-language kindergarten in the United States. Long before most educators, Peabody embraced the premise that children's play has intrinsic developmental and educational value.

With a grounding in history and literature and a reading knowledge of ten languages, in 1840, she also opened a bookstore that held Margaret Fuller's "Conversations". She published books from Nathaniel Hawthorne and others in addition to the periodicals The Dial and Æsthetic Papers. She was an advocate of antislavery and of Transcendentalism.

Peabody also led efforts for the rights of the Paiute Indians. She was the first known translator into English of the Buddhist scripture the Lotus Sutra, translating a chapter from its French translation in 1844. It was the first English version of any Buddhist scripture.

Early years
Peabody was born in Billerica, Massachusetts, on May 16, 1804. She was the eldest daughter of Nathaniel Peabody, a physician, and Elizabeth (Palmer) Peabody, the granddaughter of Joseph Palmer, a general during the American Revolutionary War. The Peabodys were a two-income family. Elizabeth advocated for preschool child education and taught school. Nathaniel was an apothecary, doctor, and dentist. Her sisters were Mary, reformer, educator, and pioneer in establishing kindergarten schools and Sophia, painter and the wife of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Peabody had three brothers, Nathaniel, George Francis, and Wellington Peabody. George and Wellington died in the twenties. Nathaniel relied on Peabody for his living expenses.

The Peabody family lived in Salem, Massachusetts, and worshiped at the Second Church (later Unitarian Church) there. The children received a thorough education at home. Elizabeth Peabody operated a school from the family home, providing a classical education for boys and girls. Nathaniel tutored the Peabody children. Peabody developed an interest in philosophy, theology, literature, and history over the years and she spoke ten languages.

In 1820, the Peabodys moved to a farm in Lancaster, Massachusetts, and Peabody taught and ran the school beginning at age 16, based on what she learned from her mother's tutelage. Peabody taught from an enlightened perspective, helping her students build character, grow spiritually, and engage in discussions about school work. In 1822, the Peabodys left the farm life of Lancaster for the social city life of Salem, where Nathaniel worked as a dentist.

The Peabody sisters
The Peabody sisters, intelligent and capable on their own, were stronger together. Sophia was an artist. Peabody and Mary were educators who played significant roles in the creation of kindergarten programs and improvements to traditional education. In 1825, Peabody and Mary lived in a boarding house on Beacon Hill, where they met a fellow boarder Horace Mann in 1832 or 1833. Rebecca Clarke, the mother of James Freeman Clarke, operated the boarding house, Ashburton Place. Living there at the time were George Stillman Hillard, Edward Kennard Rand, and Jared Sparks. The sisters were Unitarians who embraced the Transcendentalism movement and supported fellow Transcendentalists Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, who married Sophia.

Mann, a widow, came to Boston to recuperate from losing his wife. Peabody and Mary frequently talked with him about their lives and viewpoints. Sometimes, they read to one another. The young women helped Mann manage what Josephine E. Roberts called his "hopeless sorrow". Peabody shared an interest in education with Horace Mann. Although working in the fields of politics and the law, Mann had developed his educational theories.

In 1833, Mary went to Cuba, where she worked as a governess and looked after her sister Sophia, who went to the country to recuperate from some medical conditions. Mary and Sophia lived there until 1835 when they returned to Salem, where Mary taught until 1840. During that time, Mary and Mann stayed in contact via letters. Mann visited and wrote to Peabody periodically to learn what she knew of Mary. Mary questioned Peabody about the affection and "brotherly tenderness" she shared with Mann during his visits. After Mary returned from Cuba, Mann visited and wrote Mary regularly in Salem in friendship and confidence, to the exclusion of her sister.

Transcendentalism
Peabody developed a network of intellectual friends and transcendentalists, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, William Ellery Channing, Bronson Alcott, and Jones Very, who in 1837 founded the Transcendentalist Club. They sought to question traditional religious and societal thinking, and develop their political, philosophical, and literary views of the world. They advanced the belief in the inherent goodness of people.

Personal life after 1852 and death
After Peabody shut down the West Street Bookshop in 1852, she moved in with her parents in West Newton, Massachusetts, and cared for them. Peabody moved in with her sister Mary in Concord in 1859.

Peabody died on January 3, 1894, aged 89. She is buried at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, Massachusetts.

Educator
Peabody operated a private school for girls in Boston from 1822 to 1823. She was a governess to the children of Benjamin Vaughn in Hallowell, Maine, and taught other children in Maine. In 1825, Peabody set up a school in Boston, and Mary helped run it. Peabody and Mary developed an "active interest" in the work of Samuel Gridley Howe and his school, Perkins School for the Blind, after they visited the school with Mann, who sat on the board of trustees.

After 1822, Peabody resided principally in Boston where she engaged in teaching. She also became a writer and a prominent figure in the Transcendental movement. Peabody and her sister Mary operated a school in Brookline, Massachusetts, from 1825 to 1832, when there was a scandal about finances. Peabody opened a school for women to empower women. She held reading parties, gave lectures, and conducted discussions on a variety of subjects.

During 1834 and 1835, Peabody worked as an assistant teacher to Amos Bronson Alcott at his experimental Temple School in Boston. After the school closed, Peabody published Record of a School, outlining the plan of the school and Alcott's philosophy of early childhood education, which had drawn on German models.

Kindergarten
In 1859 or 1860, Peabody opened the first public kindergarten in the country on Beacon Hill in Boston with her sister Mary. They influenced the creation of public kindergarten schools. The school taught reading, writing, arithmetic, gymnastics, singing, and French. They encouraged moral and positive social engagement among the children. The sisters wrote the Moral Culture of Infancy and Kindergarten Guide in 1863 to provide information about how to set up and operate a kindergarten.

When Peabody opened her kindergarten in 1860, the practice of providing formal schooling for children younger than six was largely confined to Germany. She had a particular interest in the educational methods of Friedrich Fröbel, particularly after meeting one of his students, Margarethe Schurz, in 1859. In 1867, Peabody visited Germany to study Fröbel's teachings more closely. Through her kindergarten and as editor of the Kindergarten Messenger (1873–1877), Peabody helped establish kindergarten as an accepted institution in American education. In 1877, she organized the American Froebel Union. She also wrote numerous books in support of the cause. The extent of her influence is apparent in a statement submitted to Congress on February 12, 1897, in support of free kindergartens:

Bookstore owner
In 1840, Peabody established the West Street Bookshop near Beacon Hill and Boston Common in Boston and had a home above the bookstore where her sisters and parents lived with her. Sophia and Mary lived there until they were married. Peabody purchased foreign journals and books for her business, which was part bookstore, a lending library, and a place for scholars, liberal thinkers, and transcendentalists to meet.

It was there that Margaret Fuller held "Conversations" for women beginning on November 6, 1839. Topics for these discussions and debates included fine arts, history, mythology, literature, and nature. Fuller served as the "nucleus of conversation" and hoped to answer the "great questions" facing women: "What were we born to do? How shall we do it? which so few ever propose to themselves 'till their best years are gone by", Many figures in the woman's rights movement took part, including Sophia Dana Ripley, Caroline Sturgis, and Maria White Lowell.

Peabody lived above the bookstore until 1852, when the bookstore and library closed down. Members of the Transcendentalist movement had begun to disperse since the mid-1840s, and income from the bookstore gradually declined. In 2011, the Boston Landmarks Commission designated the building a Boston Landmark.

The Dial
For a time, Peabody was the business manager of The Dial, the main publication of the Transcendentalists. In 1843, she noted that the journal's income was not covering the cost of printing and that subscriptions totaled just over two hundred. In 1844 the magazine published Peabody's translation of a chapter of the Lotus Sutra from French, which was the first English version of a Buddhist scripture. The publication ceased shortly thereafter in April 1844.

Author and publisher
Peabody published antislavery literature and books, like Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau and children's stories written by Nathaniel Hawthorne. She was one of the country's first female publisher. In the 1860s and 1870s, Peabody wrote about social and educational reform, producing 50 articles and 10 books.

Selected works
Peabody published and authored a number of works, including this selection:
 * About Bronson Alcott's Temple School, Boston.
 * About William Ellery Channing
 * About Washington Allston. Also published in Putnam's monthly.
 * About William Ellery Channing
 * About Washington Allston. Also published in Putnam's monthly.
 * About William Ellery Channing
 * About Washington Allston. Also published in Putnam's monthly.
 * About Washington Allston. Also published in Putnam's monthly.
 * About Washington Allston. Also published in Putnam's monthly.

title: Elizabeth Peabody


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Murder, She Wrote

Murder, She Wrote is an American crime drama television series, created by Peter S. Fischer, Richard Levinson and William Link, starring Angela Lansbury, and produced and distributed by Universal Television for the CBS network. The series focuses on the life of Jessica Fletcher, a mystery writer and amateur detective, who becomes involved in solving murders that take place in the fictional town of Cabot Cove, Maine, across the United States, and abroad. The program ran for 12 seasons from September 30, 1984, to May 19, 1996, for a total of 264 episodes and included amongst its recurring cast Tom Bosley, William Windom and Ron Masak, as well as a vast array of guest cast members including Mickey Rooney, Michael Horton, Keith Michell, George Segal, Kevin McCarthy, Gene Barry, Martin Milner, Earl Holliman, Pat Morita, Tom Wopat, John Astin, Loretta Swit, John Saxon, Ruth Roman, Kathryn Grayson, Ken Howard, Bradford Dillman, Jean Peters, Neil Patrick Harris, Harvey Fierstein, and Julie Adams.

The series was a ratings hit during its broadcast, becoming a staple of CBS Sunday night TV schedule for around a decade, while achieving distinction as one of the most successful and longest-running television shows in history, averaging 25 million viewers per week in its prime. In syndication, the series is still highly successful and popular throughout the world. For her role on the program, Lansbury was nominated for ten Golden Globes, winning four, along with nominations for 12 Emmy Awards, earning her the record for the most Golden Globe nominations and wins for Best Actress in a television drama series and the most Emmy nominations for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series. The series itself also received three Emmy nominations for Outstanding Drama Series, and six Golden Globe nominations in the same category, with two major wins.

After the series finished in 1996, four television films were released from 1997 to 2003. Two point-and-click video games were released for PC: one in 2009, and a sequel in 2012. A spin-off book series continues publication as of 2024.

Origin
Series producers Peter S. Fischer, Richard Levinson and William Link developed the lead role for actress Jean Stapleton, who was initially somewhat interested but eventually turned it down, threatening the project.

Scrambling to find another major star, the producers thought Angela Lansbury would be perfect for the part of Jessica Fletcher but did not think that she would be interested in a television series. Earlier, she had acted in two film adaptations of Agatha Christie's mystery novels: as Salome Otterbourne in Death on the Nile (1978) and as Miss Marple in The Mirror Crack'd (1980). When the latter film did poorly—despite an all-star cast including Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor, Kim Novak, and Tony Curtis—the offer for Lansbury to reprise Miss Marple in three more films never materialized.

When she made it known she would be available if the right project came along, the three creators sent her the script and almost immediately, Lansbury felt she could do something with the role of Jessica Fletcher. With Murder, She Wrote debuting on Sunday, September 30, 1984, the producers were able to parlay their "mystery writer/amateur detective" premise into a 12-year hit for CBS. It also made Lansbury, known previously for her motion picture and Broadway stage work, a household name for millions of television viewers. The title comes from Murder, She Said, which was the title of a 1961 film adaptation of Agatha Christie's Miss Marple novel 4.50 from Paddington.

Premise
The show revolves around the day-to-day life of Jessica Fletcher (née MacGill), a widowed and retired English teacher, who becomes a successful mystery writer. Despite fame and fortune, Jessica remains a resident of Cabot Cove, a small coastal community in Maine (the first season episode "Murder Takes the Bus" establishes that Cabot Cove is just north of the town of Newcastle), and maintains her links with all of her old friends, never letting her success go to her head.

The show usually starts with a preview of the episode's events, with Jessica stating: "Tonight on Murder, She Wrote..." Jessica invariably proves more perceptive than the official investigators of a case, who are almost always willing to arrest the most likely suspect. By carefully piecing the clues together and asking astute questions, she leads the authorities to arrest the real murderer. Murder occurred with such regularity in her vicinity that the term "Cabot Cove syndrome" was coined to describe the constant appearance of dead bodies in remote locations. Indeed, if Cabot Cove existed in real life, it would top the FBI's national crime statistics in numerous categories, with some analysis suggesting that the homicide rate in Cabot Cove exceeds even that of the real-life murder capital of the world.

Jessica's relationship with law enforcement officials varies from place to place. Both sheriffs of Cabot Cove resign themselves to having her meddle in their cases. However, most detectives and police officers do not want her anywhere near their crime scenes, until her accurate deductions convince them to listen to her. Some are happy to have her assistance from the start, often because they are fans of her books. With time, she makes friends in many police departments across the U.S., as well as with a British police officer attached to Scotland Yard. At the start of season eight, more of the stories were set in New York City with Jessica moving into an apartment there part-time in order to teach criminology at the city university.

Production
Murder, She Wrote was mostly filmed on sound stages at Universal Studios in Universal City, California (near Los Angeles). The series also filmed exterior shots and some episodes on location in the Northern California town of Mendocino, which stood in for the fictional Maine town of Cabot Cove. Cabot Cove dockside scenes were filmed a few miles north at Noyo Harbor in Fort Bragg, California.

Bruce Lansbury, Angela's brother, served as producer of 88 episodes of the show. He was also a writer for 15 episodes.

Lansbury considers retirement in 1988
In August 1988, Lansbury expressed weariness of her commitment to the series as she was not sure, at 63, that she could continue at the pace now required of her; she specifically cited the change from seven to eight days to shoot each episode. Thus, Murder, She Wrote went into its fifth season that autumn with the distinct possibility that it would cease production at the end of it and the series finale would air in May 1989.

A solution was worked on, however, which enabled Lansbury to continue but also give her time to rest. This also enabled some secondary characters to get significant stories. For the next two seasons, Lansbury reduced her appearances in several episodes, only appearing at the beginning and the end, to introduce stories starring several friends of Jessica, such as private investigator Harry McGraw, reformed thief Dennis Stanton or MI5 agent Michael Hagarty. The "experiment" ended in 1991. In 1992, Lansbury took on a more extensive role in production as she became the show's executive producer.

Move from Sundays in 1995
Murder, She Wrote was renewed for a twelfth season after finishing the 1994-95 season as the eighth-most watched program on television, tied with NBC's new sitcom Friends for the spot. Despite the continued popularity of the program, Lansbury was considering retirement again after the upcoming season as she would be nearing seventy years of age at its conclusion. The decision, ultimately, would not be left up to her as CBS would make a decision regarding the series that would prove problematic for the network on two separate nights of programming.

Murder, She Wrote was, at the time, CBS' most popular scripted series; in fact, it had been one of only two series on the network to garner a rating in the top ten (60 Minutes was the other). Meanwhile, over at NBC, their Thursday night Must See TV lineup had been a ratings powerhouse for years and CBS decided to use Murder, She Wrote in an effort to cut into their viewership. So, after eleven years on Sunday night, the series moved to Thursday for the 1995-96 season. It would keep the same 8 PM time slot on its new night, leading off a lineup that included the new drama New York News and the long-running news magazine 48 Hours.

The move was met with protests from fans, and the entire Thursday night lineup for CBS proved to be no match for NBC's lineup. Going up against Friends and a pair of freshman comedies in its time slot, Murder, She Wrote saw its ratings drop significantly on Thursday; in fact, the series dropped below a 10.0 rating when the final season ratings were tabulated. (Its follow-up, New York News, continued the downward trend and did even lower ratings, with CBS cancelling the new drama before December 1995.)

Meanwhile, in the Sunday time slot that Murder, She Wrote was vacating, CBS elected to try a situation comedy block. Leading off the 8 PM hour, CBS went with Cybill, which starred Cybill Shepherd and had finished its abbreviated first season just outside the top 20 in the Nielsen ratings. The second half of the hour featured the new series Almost Perfect, which starred Nancy Travis as a television producer. Neither series performed well; Cybill, which had relocated from Monday night, saw its ratings drop to the point where it nearly fell out of the top 50. Almost Perfect found itself relocated to Monday night in the hopes of improving its ratings; its replacement, a retooled Bonnie, lasted five episodes on Sunday before it was cancelled.

Ultimately, Murder, She Wrote finished in 58th place in the final ratings and CBS opted not to renew the series for a thirteenth season. The network did, however, eventually reverse itself on the scheduling. Two episodes were scheduled for Sunday nights as 1996 began, with the first airing on January 7 and the second on February 25. Both of these episodes pulled in significantly higher ratings than the show had been garnering on Thursday, approaching nearly twenty million viewers for each of the two airings. CBS elected to return Murder, She Wrote to Sundays for the last four episodes of the series, which began on April 28. Three of the four episodes drew over sixteen million viewers and the finale, which aired on May 19, 1996, finished in the top 20 of that week's ratings.

After the series
The network also agreed to commission four Murder, She Wrote movies over the next few years. The first was South by Southwest (1997), with three more following as A Story to Die For (2000), The Last Free Man (2001), and The Celtic Riddle (2003).

Lansbury stated in May 2011 that she would like to make a comeback appearance as Jessica Fletcher. However, in a 2015 interview, she quashed the idea of reprising the much beloved character, stating, "I think it would be a downer. In some way, we'd have to show her as a much older woman, and I think it's better to maintain that picture we have in our mind's eye of her as a vigorous person. I'm still pretty vigorous, especially in the garden … but if I wanted to transform myself back into the woman I looked like then, it would be ridiculous. And I can't do that." Dame Angela Lansbury died on October 11, 2022, at age 96.

In 2023, over-the-top video streaming service The Roku Channel launched a 24-hour Murder, She Wrote channel.

Regular cast

 * Angela Lansbury as Jessica Fletcher (1984–1996; 264 episodes), a retired English teacher who, after being widowed in her early 50s, becomes a very successful mystery writer. The only cast member to appear in every episode as the series is centered around her.

Recurring cast

 * Tom Bosley as Sheriff Amos Tupper (1984–1988; 19 episodes), Cabot Cove's sheriff at the start of the series. Tupper later retires and goes to live with his sister.
 * Michael Horton as Grady Fletcher (12 episodes, 1984–1990, 1995), Jessica's unlucky favorite nephew, who (through no fault of his own) always seems to get in trouble with the law. After some romantic disasters, he eventually marries his girlfriend Donna.
 * Jerry Orbach as Harry McGraw (7 episodes, 1985–1987, 1989, 1991), an old-school private investigator who becomes friends with Jessica. Orbach was popular enough to garner his own, short-lived spin-off series in 1987, The Law & Harry McGraw, and returned to Murder, She Wrote after his show was cancelled. Harry ceased to be a character permanently after Orbach took on the role of Lennie Briscoe on Law & Order in 1992.
 * Len Cariou as Michael Hagarty (7 episodes, 1985–86, 1988–1992), a British former MI5 agent, who often appeared when Jessica least expected him to drag her into a dangerous case. Cariou had previously starred with Lansbury on Broadway in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street as the titular character.
 * William Windom as Dr. Seth Hazlitt (1985–1996; 52 episodes), the local doctor of Cabot Cove and one of Jessica's best friends and most intrepid supporters. Windom previously appeared as another character, a lawyer named Sam Breen, in the season 1 finale, "Funeral at Fifty-Mile". Windom also played a separate character in Magnum P.I., which takes place in the same universe.
 * Richard Paul as Sam Booth (7 episodes, 1986–89, 1991–1992), the genial, ineffectual mayor of Cabot Cove who is elected on his campaign promise to do nothing.
 * Julie Adams as Eve Simpson (10 episodes, 1987–1993), the Cabot Cove realtor with a great love for men, both single and married, and for gossiping.
 * Keith Michell as Dennis Stanton (9 episodes, 1988–1991, 1993), a suave English former jewel thief turned insurance claims investigator, who always solves his cases using unusual methods, and often sends a copy of the story to Jessica afterwards. Many of the episodes starring Dennis do not involve Jessica, and usually begin with her introducing the story to the audience, breaking the fourth wall. Keith Michell is the only actor other than Angela Lansbury to receive star billing (before the episode titles), on episodes which focus on Dennis.
 * Ron Masak as Sheriff Mort Metzger (1988–1996; 39 episodes), a former NYPD officer who takes Sheriff Tupper's place as sheriff in the mistaken belief that he would be living in a more peaceful place. His unseen wife, Adele, a former Marine capable of prodigious acts of strength, teaches self-defense classes. Masak previously appeared as other characters in earlier episodes: a police officer in the season 1 episode "Footnote to Murder", and a store owner in trouble with the IRS in the season 3 episode "No Accounting for Murder".
 * Will Nye as Deputy Floyd (1988–1991, 15 episodes), Sheriff Metzger's original deputy.
 * Louis Herthum as Deputy Andy Broom (1991–1996, 25 episodes), Sheriff Metzger's second deputy.
 * Herb Edelman as Artie Gelber (7 episodes, 1992–1995), a NYPD Lieutenant and Jessica's friend. Edelman had previously appeared as various characters in the series pilot, the season 2 episode "Murder by Appointment Only", and the season 3 episode "Murder in a Minor Key".

Occasional cast

 * Hallie Todd as Rhoda Markowitz (6 episodes, 1990–1991), Dennis Stanton's assistant. Todd had previously appeared as another character in the season 6 episode "Class Act".
 * Ken Swofford as Lt. Perry Catalano (6 episodes, 1990–1991). Swofford also appeared in four previous episodes and one later episode as various characters.
 * James Sloyan as Robert Butler (5 episodes, 1990–1991). Sloyan had previously appeared as different characters in the season 3 episode "Corned Beef and Carnage" and the season 4 episode "The Body Politic".
 * Wayne Rogers as Charlie Garrett (5 episodes, 1993–1995), a disreputable private investigator who usually gets into trouble and needs Jessica's help. Charlie's character was the replacement for Harry McGraw after Jerry Orbach's departure.
 * Leonard Lightfoot as Detective Henderson (5 episodes, 1993–1994).
 * Debbie Zipp as Donna Mayberry Fletcher (5 episodes, 1988–1990), Grady's girlfriend and later wife. Zipp had previously played another character in the season 3 episode "The Days Dwindle Down". Zipp and Horton are married in real life, and have been since prior to the show.
 * Claude Akins as Ethan Cragg (4 episodes, 1984), Jessica's fisherman friend. Ethan is replaced by Seth as Jessica's friend from Season 2 onwards.
 * Madlyn Rhue as Jean O'Neil (4 episodes, 1993–1996), Cabot Cove's disabled librarian. Rhue had previously appeared as another character in the season 6 episode "Seal of the Confessional".
 * John Astin as Harry Pierce (3 episodes, 1984–1985), a local real estate agent. In his final appearance, Pierce briefly becomes Sheriff when Amos Tupper retires but turns out to be unsuitable for the job when he commits murder. Astin had previously appeared in the season 1 episode "Hooray for Homicide", and later appeared in the season 11 episode "Film Flam", portraying different characters.
 * Genie Francis as Victoria Brandon Griffin (3 episodes, 1984, 1986, 1990), Jessica's niece. Other than Grady Fletcher, she is the only one of Jessica's many nieces and nephews to appear more than once. Victoria's husband, hapless actor Howard Griffin (Jeff Conaway), also featured in two of the episodes.
 * Ruth Roman as Loretta Speigel (3 episodes, 1987–1989), Cabot Cove's lovelorn hairdresser and an inveterate gossip.
 * Kathryn Grayson as Ideal Molloy (3 episodes, 1987–1989), one of the regulars at Loretta's beauty parlour.
 * Gloria DeHaven as Phyllis Grant (3 episodes, 1987–1989), one of the regulars at Loretta's beauty parlour.
 * Bruce Gray as Ted Hartley (3 episodes, 1991–1994). Gray had previously appeared as different characters in two other episodes.
 * Gregory Sierra as Lt. Gabriel Caceras (3 episodes, 1993–1995). Sierra had previously appeared as various characters in three other episodes.
 * Paddi Edwards as Lois Hoey (2 episodes, 1984), a resident of Cabot Cove and member of its PTA, and a friend of Jessica's. Appears in the Pilot and another episode of Season 1.
 * Many actors and actresses also appeared in many episodes playing various characters, sometimes a different character in each one. These include Rosanna Huffman, who portrayed a member of the PTA in the Pilot episode and various others across all the seasons, appearing in 7 episodes overall; Tricia O'Neil who appeared in the Pilot and 5 episodes overall; and Barbara Babcock, who portrayed different characters in 5 episodes. There are several other examples including veteran character actor Steve Forrest famous for S.W.A.T. and a memorable appearance on Dallas.

Crossover with Magnum, P.I.
The third-season episode of Murder, She Wrote entitled "Magnum on Ice" concludes a crossover that began on the seventh-season Magnum, P.I. episode "Novel Connection". In the episode's plot, Jessica comes to Hawaii to investigate an attempt to murder Robin Masters' guests, and then tries to clear Magnum when he's accused of killing the hitman. The Magnum, P.I. episode originally aired on November 19, 1986, with the concluding Murder, She Wrote episode following four days later on November 23.

The Magnum, P.I. episode of the crossover is included on the Murder, She Wrote Season 3 DVD set, as well as the Complete Series Set. The Magnum, P.I. Season 7 DVD set, as well as its Complete Series set, includes the Murder, She Wrote episode.

Awards and nominations
Over its twelve-year run Murder, She Wrote received numerous award nominations. Lansbury herself holds the record for the most Emmy nominations for outstanding lead actress in a drama series with twelve, one for each season. She never won, which is also a record. Mary Dodson, the art director for 102 of the series' 264 episodes, received three Emmy nominations for her work on Murder, She Wrote. In total, the show was nominated for 41 Emmys.

US television ratings
Murder, She Wrote maintained extremely high ratings, finishing in the top 15 of shows for eleven of its 12 seasons (eight of which it was in the top 10), even well into its late seasons. By its 11th season, Murder, She Wrote was still averaging 25 million viewers per week. At its very peak, the show even hit above 40 million US viewers. However, at the beginning of its 12th season in 1995, CBS moved the show from its extremely popular Sunday night time slot to Thursday night forcing it to compete with NBC's Must See TV line up, and as a result the ratings plummeted, during Season 11 and 12 CBS lost affiliates during the television realignment, meaning major markets could not find the network. The show rated as the following:

Cancelled reboot
Deadline Hollywood reported in October 2013 that NBC was planning a reboot of the series, starring Oscar-winning actress Octavia Spencer as a "hospital administrator and amateur sleuth who self-publishes her first mystery novel." The next month, Lansbury said that while she was a fan of Spencer, she was not a fan of using the title; she said "I think it's a mistake to call it Murder, She Wrote because Murder, She Wrote will always be about Cabot Cove and this wonderful little group of people who told those lovely stories and enjoyed a piece of that place, and also enjoyed Jessica Fletcher, who is a rare and very individual kind of person." It was decided by producers that Spencer's character would not be named Jessica Fletcher, for only Lansbury could play Fletcher. On January 21, 2014, Deadline Hollywood announced that the reboot would not be going forward.

Film adaptation
On September 9, 2023, it was revealed that a film adaptation of the series is in the early stages of development at Universal Pictures. Dumb Money screenwriters Lauren Schuker Blum and Rebecca Angelo will write the script while Amy Pascal acts as producer.

Merchandise
In 1985, Warren Company released a Murder, She Wrote board game. In the game, one player takes the hidden role of a killer and the other players try to determine which player is the killer through deduction. The killer wins for killing five of the characters on the game-board and escaping, while the detective players win by correctly deducing the identity of the killer.

In December 2009, casual game developer and publisher Legacy Interactive, under license with Universal Pictures Digital Platforms Group (UPDPG), announced the release a PC and Macintosh video game, Murder, She Wrote, based on the television series. In the game, players help Jessica Fletcher to solve five unusual murders. A sequel, Murder She Wrote 2, was launched by Legacy Interactive in November 2012.

In 2020, Funko released a Jessica Fletcher POP! vinyl collectible figure.

Multimedia

 * List of novels
 * Home video releases
 * Mystery Theatre

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Murder, She Wrote


text:
Talk:Thomas D. Rice

Untitled
The other changes were great, but references are important, especially when establishing facts. - Reboot
 * Well, maybe, but those were "it happened in history" type pages, not pages on Rice, which is what we would expect from External Links. I think of Ext-Links as providing more detail, but those just had his dates mixed in with a lot of other stuff.   I remember some better pages on Rice from when I was working on blackface, maybe I can find them again.  Best regards, Ortolan88

Date of birth
It is different from the one at Find-A-Grave. Lincher 12:43, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

 * That doesn't worry me much. Find-A-Grave is not a very authoritative source. - Jmabel | Talk 04:47, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Questioning "opened the doors for black comedians" statement.
That may not be an exact quote, but my point is Rice was white, not black, so I'd like to see the claim that he did something at all positive for black people through his very racist acts (not just in current terms, but as the article says but then backpeddles on, in the terms of the times)! I have no expertise nor extensive enough knowledge to correct or even positively identify problems here so I ask that those who know more attend to this. Thank you. --Fitzhugh 04:54, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

I think it is intersting that I quickly learned by looking elsewhere that he WAS white, and that makes the earlier version of this article quite interesting: it seemed to go to great lengths to "paint" him in a positive light (pun not intended, but appropriate, if backward!) Why not just say the truth, as I added: his show WAS racist, he WAS white, he mocked blacks in a nasty manner, and as such deserves no "credit" for opening the doors to black actors. Perhaps historically his shows played a role in developing a desire to see black actors demean themselves instead of white actors mock them, but does that mean Rice deserves accolades for shattering racist barriers? Hell no. I don't claim to know all about this, but really, this relativism is as offensive as it is ignorant. --Fitzhugh 05:11, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
 * You're right on that Rice's act was racist, as was minstrelsy in general. I think what that line was supposed to mean was that minstrelsy opened the door for black performers, not Rice specifically. He was one of the earliest blackface dancers, but it does seem a bit of a stretch to extend the argument of "minstrelsy opened the door to black performers" to "Rice opened the door to black performrers", so it's probably not a good idea to include that in the article. An interesting book to pick up for a primer on this is Mel Watkins's On the Real Side: A History of African American Comedy from Slavery to Chris Rock. He traces black humor from slave times, into blackface comedy (which eventually did get taken over to a great extent by actual black comedians) on into Vaudeville, early films, and so on. It's a very good book, and it makes you realize just how profound the influence of black culture on American culture in general has been and continues to be. — Amcaja ( talk ) 05:40, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

"highly racist"
I think the following excerpt attempts to address an important issue but lacks sufficient depth to be effective: "'As a white man playing highly derogatory imitations of black men, Rice's brand of entertainment was highly racist, though not necessarily thought of as such at the time.'" This quotation smacks of an indignant historian who is in a hurry to label Thomas Smith as a racist, but has not taken the time to provide sufficient support for the assertions that his imitations were "highly derogatory" or that the entertainment was indeed "highly racist". Both uses of the word "highly" seem superfluous, especially without any qualification as to what differentiates "derogatory" from "highly derogatory" and "racist" from "highly racist". Furthermore it does not acknowledge the fact that the concept of racism as our contemporary society knows it was poorly developed at the time, and it was not merely that Thomas Rice's contemporaries did not "necessarily [think] of [his imitations]" as racist, as if they had failed to see the commonalities between features of his imitations and those included within some notion of "racism" that existed at the time.

I think that the article would benefit from a more explicit description of the characterizations Thomas Rice presented in his shows at least in enough depth for a reader to conclude that they were "derogatory" and I think that both instances of the word "highly" should be removed because they are both arbitrary. cmac 06:44, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

 * I agree. Is there evidence that blacks saw this as "highly derogatory imitations of black men"? This sounds like a centuries-later characterization. The fact that blacks embraced this form is odd if they found it hightly derogatory. Mattisse  22:59, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

See the quote from the previous piece: Times, 8 November, 1836 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.73.151.200 (talk) 03:09, 16 February 2014 (UTC)

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Bias
'was an American performer and playwright who appropriated African-American vernacular speech, song, and dance' This sounds like something off an SJW blog.--Johnny 42 (talk) 22:05, 2 September 2015 (UTC) True--Bubblesorg (talk) 16:41, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

Merger proposal
I propose that Jim Crow (archetype) be merged into Thomas D. Rice. The small amount of content in the 'archetype' has already been merged and really only explores the character, not in any sense an 'archetype' I suggest a redirect Jim Crow (character) be added redirecting to here. Pincrete (talk) 17:12, 30 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Merge has been completed, appropriate tags have been placed, I will create the Jim Crow (character) redirect. Safiel (talk) 03:31, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

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No I had never heard of Thomas Rice, but I came here to learn the origin of "Jim Crow" Radio Sharon (talk) 07:17, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

To add to article
To add to this article: the fact that Rice was known as an "Ethiopian delineator." 173.88.246.138 (talk) 20:47, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

What is the relevance of Jim Crow more recently
Surprising that this page does not discuss the Jim Crow laws.

National Geographic: ''Fifty years ago, the Voting Rights Act targeted the laws and practices of Jim Crow. Here’s where the name came from.'' Experts don’t really know how a racist performance in the North came to represent racist laws and policies in the South. But they can speculate.

Since the phrase originated in blackface minstrelsy, Lott says that it’s almost “perversely accurate … that it should come to be the name for official segregation and state-sponsored racism.”

“I think probably in the popular white mind,” he says, “it was just used because that’s just how they referred to black people.” https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/150806-voting-rights-act-anniversary-jim-crow-segregation-discrimination-racism-history Peter K Burian (talk) 13:21, 23 February 2021 (UTC)

 * Thomas D. Rice >> Jim Crow (character) >> Jim Crow laws.  I don't see why the laws need to be discussed directly in this article, which is a biography.  Ghmyrtle (talk) 08:02, 24 February 2021 (UTC)

To add to article
Basic information to add to this article: Rice's ethnic background. Was he white and of European heritage? If so, why fail to mention that anywhere in the current version of this article? 173.88.246.138 (talk) 03:11, 1 November 2022 (UTC)

title: Talk:Thomas D. Rice


text:
Sarah Miles

Sarah Miles (born 31 December 1941) is a retired English actress. She is known for her roles in films The Servant (1963), Blowup (1966), Ryan's Daughter (1970), The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing (1973), White Mischief (1987) and Hope and Glory (1987). For her performance in Ryan's Daughter, Miles received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress.

Early life
Sarah Miles was born in Ingatestone, Essex, in south east England; her brother was film director, producer, and screenwriter Christopher Miles. Miles's parents were Clarice Vera Remnant and John Miles, of a family of engineers; her father's inability to secure a divorce from his first wife meant Miles and her siblings were illegitimate. Per Miles's own account, her maternal grandfather, Frank Remnant, was the illegitimate son of Prince Francis of Teck (1870–1910), which would make Miles a second cousin once removed of Queen Elizabeth II. Unable to speak until the age of nine because of a stammer and dyslexia, she attended Roedean and three other schools but was expelled from all of them. Miles enrolled at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), graduating in 1960 with an Acting (RADA Diploma).

Early career
Shortly after finishing at RADA, Miles performed in an episode of the TV series Deadline Midnight titled "Manhunt". Her film debut was as Shirley Taylor, a "husky wide-eyed nymphet" in Term of Trial (1962), which featured Laurence Olivier; she was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Newcomer.

Miles appeared in The Rehearsal (1963) for TV and then played Vera from Manchester in Joseph Losey's The Servant (1963), and "thrust sexual appetite into British films" according to David Thomson.

Miles was in a short directed by her brother, The Six-Sided Triangle (1963) and a feature film directed by and starring Laurence Harvey, The Ceremony (1963). She did Ring Round the Moon (1964) for TV.

16 June 1965 saw the release of Ken Annakin's Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines, a British period comedy film revolving around the craze of early aviation circa 1910. A pompous newspaper magnate (Robert Morley) is convinced, by his daughter (Miles) and her fiancé (James Fox), to organise an air race from London to Paris. A large sum of money is offered to the winner, hence it attracts a variety of characters who participate. The film received positive reviews, described as funny, colourful and clever, capturing the early enthusiasm for aviation.

She was in Time Lost and Time Remembered (1966), directed by Desmond Davis.

In 1966, Miles gained another BAFTA nomination, this time as Best Actress. She had a "peripheral" part in Michelangelo Antonioni's Blowup. At Antonioni's death in 2007, she referred to him as "a rogue and a tyrant and a brilliant man".

Robert Bolt
After acting in several plays from 1966 to 1969, Miles was cast as Rosy in the leading title role of David Lean's Ryan's Daughter (1970). It was critically savaged, which discouraged Lean from making a film for some years, despite Miles's performance gaining her an Oscar nomination and an Oscar win for John Mills, and the film making a substantial profit. In Terence Pettigrew's biography of Trevor Howard, Miles describes the filming of Ryan's Daughter in Ireland in 1969. She recalls, "My main memory is of sitting on a hilltop in a caravan at six in the morning in the rain. There was no other actor or member of the crew around me. I would sit there getting mad, waiting for either the rain to stop or someone to arrive. Film-acting is so horrifically belittling."

Miles married the film's screenwriter, Robert Bolt. He wrote and directed Lady Caroline Lamb (1972) starring Miles in the title role. She then appeared in The Hireling (1973).

On 11 February 1973, while filming The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing, aspiring screenwriter David Whiting, who was briefly one of her lovers, was found dead in her motel room. She was acquitted of culpability in his death. Miles later commented: "It went on for six months. Murder? Suicide? Murder! Suicide! Murder! Suicide! And, gradually, the truth came out, which I'm not going to speak about, but it certainly wasn't me. I had actually saved the man from three suicide attempts, so why would I want to murder him? I really can't imagine." This led to the end of her first marriage to Bolt.

Television
Miles starred in some TV movies: Great Expectations (1974), Requiem for a Nun (1975), and Dynasty (1976) as well as the Spanish film Bride to Be (1975).

Her performance as Anne Osborne in The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea (1976) was nominated for a Golden Globe.

Miles appeared in The Big Sleep (1978), Venom (1981), Walter and June (1983), Ordeal by Innocence (1984), Steaming (1985), Harem (1986) and Queenie (1987).

She received great acclaim for Hope and Glory. Interviewer Lynn Barber wrote of Miles' appearances in Hope and Glory, White Mischief, and her two earliest films that she "has that Vanessa Redgrave quality of seeming to have one skin fewer than normal people, so that the emotion comes over unmuffled and bare."

Filming White Mischief on location in Kenya in 1987, Miles worked for the second and last time with Trevor Howard, who had a supporting role, but was by then seriously ill from alcoholism. The company wanted to fire him, but Miles was determined that Howard's distinguished film career would not end that way. In an interview with Terence Pettigrew for his biography of Howard, she describes how she gave an ultimatum to the executives, threatening to quit the production if they got rid of him. The gamble worked. Howard was kept on. It was his last major film; he died the following January.

Later career
She appeared in A Ghost in Monte Carlo (1990), The Touch (1992), Dandelion Dead (1994), Jurij (2001) and The Accidental Detective (2004).

She most recently (2008) appeared in Well at the Trafalgar Studios and the Apollo Theatre opposite Natalie Casey.

Personal life
Miles was married twice to the British playwright Robert Bolt, 1967–1975 and 1988–1995. He wrote and directed the film Lady Caroline Lamb, in which Miles played the eponymous heroine, and wrote Ryan's Daughter, as well. After his stroke, the couple reunited and Miles cared for him. "I would be dead without her", Bolt said in 1987, "When she's away, my life takes a nosedive. When she returns, my life soars." The couple had a son. Miles stated, in 2007, that she had been drinking her own urine for 30 years for health reasons. In 2016, she reported that she had written a sequel to Ryan's Daughter.

Books
Sarah Miles has written the following books:

Other work
In 1995, Miles was one of the readers of Edward Lear poems on a specially made spoken word audio CD bringing together a collection of Lear's nonsense songs.

title: Sarah Miles


text:
Haverford College

Haverford College is a private liberal arts college in Haverford, Pennsylvania. It was founded as a men's college in 1833 by members of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). Haverford began accepting non-Quakers in 1849 and women in 1980.

The college offers Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Science degrees in 31 majors across humanities, social sciences and natural sciences disciplines. It is a member of the Tri-College Consortium, which includes Bryn Mawr and Swarthmore colleges, as well as the Quaker Consortium, which includes those schools as well as the University of Pennsylvania.

All of the college's approximately 1300 students are undergraduates, and nearly all reside on campus. Social and academic life is governed by an honor code and influenced by Quaker philosophy. Its 216 acre suburban campus has predominantly stone Quaker Colonial Revival architecture. The college's athletics teams compete as the Fords in the Centennial Conference of NCAA Division III.

History
Haverford College was founded in 1833 by members of the Orthodox Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends to ensure an education grounded in Quaker values for young Quaker men. It was the earliest Quaker liberal arts college. In 1849 it opened enrollment to non-Quakers. Originally an all-male institution, Haverford began admitting female transfer students in 1969 and became fully co-educational in 1980. The first woman to graduate (the wife of a faculty member) was a member of the class of 1971. The first black student to graduate from Haverford did so in 1926.

For most of the 20th century, Haverford's total enrollment was kept below 300, but the college went through two periods of expansion during and after the 1970s, reaching a total of about 1350 students in 2020. Thomas R. Tritton was president of the college between 1997 and 2007 and oversaw the construction of several new buildings, including the Marian E. Koshland Integrated Natural Sciences Center and the Douglas B. Gardner Integrated Athletic Center.

In the fall of 2020, much of the student body went on strike, sparked by anger at the administration's response to the killing of Walter Wallace in Philadelphia. The strike later expanded into a broader protest over concerns of racial injustice at the college. Some students opposed the strike, arguing that strikers were demonizing students who expressed concerns and suppressing dissenting views. After two weeks, the strike ended when the administration agreed to most of the organizers' demands.

Wendy Raymond has been president of the college since 2019.

Honor code
In 1897, the students and faculty of Haverford voted to adopt an honor code to govern academic affairs. Since 1963, every student has been allowed to schedule his or her own final exams. Take-home examinations are also standard at Haverford and may include strict instructions such as time limits, prohibitions on using assigned texts or personal notes, and calculator usage. All students are bound to follow these instructions by the code.

Originally conceived as a code of academic honesty, the honor code had expanded by the 1970s to govern social interactions. The code does not list specific rules of behavior, but rather emphasizes a philosophy of mutual trust, concern and respect, as well as genuine engagement, that students are expected to follow. A student (or other community member) who feels that another has broken the code, is encouraged not to look the other way but rather to confront and engage in a dialogue with the potential offender, before taking matters to an honor council which can help mediate the dispute.

Every student is required to sign a pledge agreeing to the honor code prior to matriculation. The honor code is entirely student-run. It originated with a body of students who felt it necessary and it is amended and ratified by current students annually at an event called "Plenary". Student government officers administer the code and all academic matters are heard by student juries. More severe matters are addressed by administrators. Abstracts from cases heard by students and joint administrator-student panels are distributed to all students by several means, including as print-outs in mailboxes. The trial abstracts are made anonymous by the use of pseudonyms who are often characters from entertainment or history.

The honor code failed to be ratified in 2013, 2018, and 2023 although on all occasions it was reinstated following special assemblies of the student body.

Academics
Haverford offers Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Science degrees in 31 majors across humanities, social sciences and natural sciences. All departments require a senior thesis, project or research for graduation, and many departments also have junior-level seminar or year-long project such as in biology (superlab) and chemistry (superlab). The college also maintains a distribution requirement, spreading course work in all three areas of humanities, social sciences and natural sciences, in addition to major course works. Its most popular majors, by 2021 graduates, were:
 * Chemistry (34)
 * Computer Science (31)
 * Economics (31)
 * Political Science & Government (29)
 * Biology/Biological Sciences (27)
 * Psychology (25)
 * English Language & Literature (21)
 * Mathematics (20)

Consortium
Haverford's consortium relationship with Bryn Mawr, Swarthmore, and the University of Pennsylvania (the Quaker Consortium) greatly expands its course offerings. Haverford and Bryn Mawr have a particularly close relationship (the Bi-College Consortium), with over 2,000 students cross-registering between the two schools. The campuses are only 1 mile apart and a shuttle called the Blue Bus runs frequently back and forth. Some departments, such as Religion and Music, are housed at Haverford, while others like Theatre and Growth and Structure of Cities are at Bryn Mawr. Students can major in these departments from both colleges. Furthermore, students of one of the Tri-Collegiate Consortium Schools (Swarthmore, Bryn Mawr, and Haverford) are allowed to pursue a major in a subject at a Tri-Collegiate institution apart from the one they are a student of.

Admissions
U.S. News deemed Haverford's admissions "most selective," with the class of 2026 acceptance rate being 14.2%. Applying for admission to the class of 2026 were 5,658 applicants; 804 were admitted. Of those admitted submitting such data, 96% were in the top 10% of their high school class and 100% were in the top 20% of their high school. Of those admitted to the class of 2026, 54.5% identified themselves as persons of color, and 14% of those admitted were first generation college students. The college is need-aware for domestic applicants, having ended its need-blind policy in 2016.

Rankings
Haverford is ranked 8th among liberal arts colleges in the 2022 Wall Street Journal/Times Higher Education College Rankings, and tied for 21st among U.S. liberal arts colleges in the 2023 "Best Colleges" ranking by U.S News & World Report, and ranked 21st for "Best Value" and tied at 23rd for "Best Undergraduate Teaching" among liberal arts colleges. Washington Monthly ranked Haverford 5th in 2023 among 218 liberal arts colleges in the U.S. based on its contribution to the public good, as measured by social mobility, research, and promoting public service. The college was ranked 49th across 650 universities and colleges in the 2019 edition of Forbes "Top Colleges", and 18th among liberal arts colleges alone. Niche ranked the school the 7th best national liberal arts college for 2021.

Graduates
According to the National Science Foundation, Haverford is sixth among liberal arts college, and eighth among all colleges and universities in the United States, in the proportion of its graduates who went on to earn PhDs across all fields from 2008 to 2017. When limited to doctorates in science and engineering disciplines, Haverford ranks sixth among liberal arts colleges and tenth among all colleges and universities.

Campus

Haverford College is located on the Main Line northwest of Philadelphia. The school is connected to Center City Philadelphia by the Paoli/Thorndale Line commuter rail system and Norristown High Speed Line (R100). The campus itself is situated in an affluent suburban neighborhood, adjacent to the Haverford School, the Merion Golf Club and the Merion Cricket Club, one of the oldest country clubs in the United States. Nearby attractions within walking distance include various food markets, grocery stores, restaurants, and Suburban Square, which hosts retail stores, restaurants and a local farmer's market.

The larger Southern portion of campus is in Haverford Township, with a smaller Northern portion in Lower Merion Township.

Buildings
The college operates more than 50 academic, athletic, and residential buildings, which are mostly stone and reflect Quaker and colonial design principles. The most recent additions are the Marian E. Koshland Integrated Natural Science Center and the Douglas B. Gardner '83 Integrated Athletic Center (colloquially referred to as the GIAC). Two dorms, by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, began housing freshman and upperclassman in the fall of 2012.

Haverford's Lutnick Library (formerly known as Magill Library) boasts more than a half million of its own volumes and has access to nearly two million more through its unusual Tripod computerized catalog system, which integrates its library with those of neighboring Bryn Mawr and Swarthmore Colleges. In addition to Lutnick's main resources, the college maintains three smaller music, science, and astronomy libraries and a number of special collections including the Quaker and Special Collections sections that include numerous rare books and other treasures such as the C.C. Morris (Class of 1904) Cricket Library.

In the fall of 2017, the college unveiled renovations to Ryan Gym, which now serves as a new Visual Culture, Arts, and Media facility (VCAM), housing the Visual Studies Minor, the Haverford Innovations Program, a Maker Arts Space, and the John B. Hurford ’60 Center for the Arts and Humanities and its Philadelphia Area Creative Collaboratives Initiative. The project, designed by MSR Architects, earned a 2018 Education Facility Design Award of Excellence from the American Institute of Architects. The second phase of the college's Lives That Speak campaign involved a renovation of Magill Library, which began in Spring 2018 under the direction of Perry, Dean, Rogers Architects, and the library opened under the new name Lutnick Library in fall 2019.

Haverford College Arboretum
Comprising the entire campus, the Haverford College Arboretum is the oldest collegiate arboretum in the United States. In 1834, a year after the college's founding, the English landscape gardener William Carvill was hired to design the plan for the campus. Carvill developed a design to replace the tilled fields, woodlots and pastures, using trees to frame and complement open spaces. He bordered the lanes with alleés of trees and planted groups of trees in odd numbers. Carvill also constructed grape arbors and a serpentine walk, reflecting the English landscape tradition of Sir Humphrey Repton. Carvill's mark is still evident today in the pastoral landscape which includes several original trees including a Swamp white oak, Quercus bicolor, and Bur oak, Quercus macrocarpa, on Founders Green.

In 1901, a group of students and alumni formed the Campus Club to help preserve the campus landscape after discovering Carvill's original plan. Their work eventually led to the founding of the Haverford College Campus Arboretum Association (now the Haverford College Arboretum Association) in 1974, which continues to perpetuate Carvill's original design. To date, the arboretum's 216 acre contain a nature trail distancing 2.2 miles, a pinetum with 300 different conifers, a duck pond, historic trees of diverse species, sculpture, as well as flower and Asian gardens.

Housing
Roughly 99% of the student body resides on campus, where housing options include apartments, themed houses and traditional dormitories. The minute fraction who choose to seek other accommodations do so nearby in neighboring townships. Approximately 60% of faculty also reside on campus.

Themed housing options include La Casa Hispanica, which "supports the endeavors of students actively engaged in organizing programs concerned with the cultures and civilizations of the Spanish-speaking world", the Ira de A. Reid House, which seeks students active in the Black Students' League or members of the African Diaspora interested in the culture and politics of Africans, Cadbury house, which provides a substance-free and quiet living environment, and Yarnall, which has no permanent theme. Various housing and room arrangements exist, including suites of singles, doubles, and triples.

Journalism
Student publications include The Bi-College News, a newspaper in collaboration with students at Bryn Mawr College that serves both campuses; The Clerk, an independent, online newspaper; Feathers & Fur, a fashion magazine also in collaboration with students at Bryn Mawr College; Milkweed, a student literary magazine; Without a (Noun), the Haverford satire/humor magazine; Body Text, an academic journal; Margin, a student-edited creative magazine; and The Record, the student yearbook.

Athletics
Haverford College competes at the NCAA Division III level in the Centennial Conference.

Haverford is home to the only varsity cricket team in the United States. Haverford's cricket team (started in 1833) is generally accepted as the first cricket club exclusively for Americans and won The Intercollegiate Cricket Association (which existed from 1881–1924) championship 19 times.

Its men's and women's track and field and cross country teams are perennial powerhouses in their division, with men's cross country winning the 2010 Cross Country Division III National Championships.

Haverford's men's soccer team is among the nation's oldest, having won its first intercollegiate match in 1905 against Harvard College, and in 2015 made it to quarterfinals of the NCAA Division III Championships.

Haverford's fencing team has competed since the early 1930s and is a member of both the Middle Atlantic Collegiate Fencing Association (MACFA) and the National Intercollegiate Women's Fencing Association (NIWFA).

Several Haverford athletic teams are highly competitive in the Centennial Conference; for example, women's basketball won the 2014 Centennial Conference Championship and progressed to the second round of the NCAA Division III women's basketball tournament. Women's softball also won Centennial Conference titles in 2006, 2014, and in 2016. The 2016 team advanced to the Super Regional tournament, a first for any Centennial Conference softball team. The Men's Lacrosse team won the Centennial Conference Championship in 2010.

Despite the rest of the Centennial Conference choosing to play sports in the spring of 2021 (as well as their academic rivals in the NESCAC), Haverford decided to opt-out of competition due to COVID-19 concerns.

Notable people
Among faculty, alumni, and associates are 5 Nobel Prize recipients, 6 Pulitzer Prize recipients, 20 Rhodes Scholars, and 85 Fulbright Scholars.

Notable graduates of Haverford College include a number of prominent businessmen such as Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick (1983), co-founder of MBK Partners Michael Kim (1985), Palantir Technologies co-founder and CEO Alex Karp (1989), and former co-chairman of Goldman Sachs and United States Deputy Secretary of State John C. Whitehead (1943). Haverford also counts among its alumni five Nobel Prize winners, including George Smith (1963), a co-recipient of the 2018 chemistry prize, and Nobel Peace Prize winner Philip Noel-Baker (1908), Emmy Award-winning journalist Juan Williams (1976), actor Daniel Dae Kim (1990), five winners of the Pulitzer Prize, including humor columnist Dave Barry (1969) and journalist David Wessel (1975), editor-in-chief of Harvard Business Review Adi Ignatius (1981), Tony Award-winning playwright of Lend Me a Tenor and Crazy for You Ken Ludwig (1972), composer Steven Gerber (1969), theoretical physicist Curtis Callan (1961), professional sports executive Arn Tellem (1976), former CEO of NPR Ken Stern (1985), tech entrepreneur James Kinsella (1982), Paddington Bear illustrator R.W. Alley (1979), and architect Gil Schafer III (1984).

Notable attendees who did not graduate include the early 20th century artist and illustrator Maxfield Parrish, as well as actors such as Chevy Chase, Judd Nelson, and George Segal. Fictional FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper, from the television series Twin Peaks, was a member of the class of 1976.

title: Haverford College


text:
The Famous Five

The Famous Five is a series of children's adventure novels and short stories written by English author Enid Blyton. The first book, Five on a Treasure Island, was published in 1942. The novels feature the adventures of a group of young children – Julian, Dick, Anne, George and their dog Timmy.

The vast majority of the stories take place in the children's school holidays. Each time they meet they get caught up in an adventure, often involving criminals or lost treasure. Sometimes the scene is set close to George's family home at Kirrin Cottage, such as the picturesque Kirrin Island, owned by George and her family in Kirrin Bay. George's own home and various other houses the children visit or stay in are hundreds of years old and often contain secret passages or smugglers' tunnels.

In some books the children go camping in the countryside, on a hike or holiday together elsewhere. However, the settings are almost always rural and enable the children to discover the simple joys of cottages, islands, the English and Welsh countryside and sea shores, as well as an outdoor life of picnics, bicycle trips and swimming.

Blyton intended to write only six or eight books in the series, but owing to their high sales and immense commercial success she went on to write twenty-one full-length Famous Five novels, as well as a number of other series in similar style following groups of children discovering crime on holiday. By the end of 1953, more than six million copies had been sold. Today, more than two million copies of the books are sold each year, making them one of the best-selling series for children ever written, with sales totalling over a hundred million. All the novels have been adapted for television, and several have been adapted as films in various countries.

Blyton's publisher, Hodder & Stoughton, first used the term "The Famous Five" in 1951, after nine books in the series had been published. Before this, the series was referred to as The 'Fives' Books.

The Five

 *  is the oldest of the five, cousin to George and elder brother to Dick and Anne. He is tall, strong and intelligent as well as caring, responsible and kind. His cleverness and reliability are often noted by Aunt Fanny. He is the leader of the group and is very protective towards Anne and sometimes, to her frustration, towards George. Julian is the most mature of the group but, although well-meaning, his manner can at times come over as overbearing, pompous or priggish. At the start of the series, Julian is 12 years old. Over time, he reaches his goal of fully maturing into a young adult.
 *  has a cheeky sense of humour, but is also dependable and kind in nature. He is the same age as his cousin George, 1 year younger than his brother Julian and a year older than his sister Anne – eleven at the start of the series. Though inclined to tease his sister at times, Dick is, like Julian, very caring towards Anne and does his best to keep her cheered up when she gets upset. He had a heroic role in Five on a Treasure Island. He uses his wits and saves the five in many adventures but probably has the least clearly-drawn character of the four cousins.
 * George is a tomboy, who demands that people call her  instead of Georgina; she cuts her hair very short and dresses like a boy. She is headstrong and courageous by nature and, like her father, scientist Quentin Kirrin, has a hot and fiery temper. Introduced to the other characters in the first book, she later attends a boarding school with Anne where the teachers also agree to call her 'George'. Blyton eventually revealed that the character was based on herself. It is notable that the chief protagonist of the Malory Towers stories also possessed a fiery temper as a defining character trait. George has a loyal dog named Timmy who would do anything for her. She often gets cross when anyone calls her by her birth name or makes fun of Timmy, and she loves it when somebody calls her George or mistakes her for a boy. In Five Get into a Fix, old Mrs Janes mistakes her for a boy: even though Julian had told her that she was a girl, she later forgets this. George sometimes takes this to the point of asking that her name be prefixed with Master instead of Miss. Various references have been made to what meaning should be read into this – for instance "I remember reading in my first Famous Five book about a girl called Master George. What a puzzle and thrill. She claims to never tell lies as that is cowardly."
 *  is the youngest in the group, and generally takes care of the domestic duties during the Five's various camping holidays. As the youngest, she is more likely than the others to be frightened, and does not really enjoy the adventures as much as the others. She is ten years old in the first book of the series. She sometimes lets her tongue run away with her, but ultimately she is as brave and resourceful as the others. She likes doing the domestic things such as planning, organising and preparing meals, and keeping where they are staying clean and tidy, be it a cave, house, tent or caravan. In Smuggler's Top it is suggested she is claustrophobic, as she is frightened of enclosed spaces, which remind her of bad dreams. But the adventures invariably lead the five into tunnels, down wells, and into dungeons and other enclosed spaces, demonstrating how brave she really is.
 *  Alias Timmy is George's faithful dog. He is a large, brown mongrel with a long tail. George adopted him after finding him abandoned on the moors as a puppy. He is very friendly; he is clever, affectionate and loyal to the children and to George in particular; he provides physical protection for them many times. Timmy's presence is frequently given as the reason the children's parents allow them to wander unsupervised.  George adores Timmy and thinks that he is the best dog in the world, and often becomes furious when people insult or threaten him. This is shown in 'Five On A Secret Trail' when she runs away from home with Timmy because he was being teased as he was forced to wear a cardboard collar. In the first book of the series, George's parents have forbidden her to keep Timmy, and she is forced to hide him with a fisher boy in the village. After the end of the Five's first adventure, her parents relent and she is allowed to keep him in the house and also take him with her to boarding school. It is a notable feature of the stories that Timmy's thoughts and feelings are frequently described.

Friends the Five meet

 * , the fisherboy, appears in some of the books set in Kirrin Cottage. In the first book, after George's parents forbid her to keep the dog, Alf keeps Timmy for her. Timmy adores Alf. Alf also looks after George's boat. In later books Alf only looks after George's boat, as George's parents let Timmy stay in the house. Alf also appears as James of the same background.
 * , the ragamuffin girl, clever but wild, joins the Five on three adventures near the end of the series. She is approximately the same age as the children and is a tomboy like George. Her parents were in the circus, but her mother died and her father was imprisoned for theft. She admires Dick and thinks the world of him.
 *  is the housekeeper at George's house. She is an extremely kind woman who is often present at Kirrin Cottage when Uncle Quentin and Aunt Fanny go off somewhere. All the four cousins are extremely attached to her. Joanna contracts scarlet fever in the last book. She is sometimes referred to as Joan in Blyton's Famous Five short stories like Five Have a Puzzling Time and other stories.
 *  appears in two books. He has a habit of imitating cars (which drives his father mad) and has a pet monkey called Mischief. His father is also a scientist who is Uncle Quentin's friend.
 *  is a friend of Jo's who works in the circus. The Five meet in him in the fourteenth book in the series, Five Have Plenty of Fun.
 * Wilfred meets the Five in the book Five Have a Mystery to Solve. He has an inexplicable ability to attract animals.

Grown-ups in the Famous Five

 *  is George's mother, and aunt to Dick, Julian and Anne. She is married to Uncle Quentin, and is, through most of Blyton's Famous Five novels, the principal maternal figure in the lives of the children. She is a very kind and easy-going woman, and shows considerable patience with her husband over his short temper and absent-mindedness.
 *  is George's father, and a world-famous scientist, who is kidnapped or held hostage in several of the children's adventures. He possesses a quick temper and has little tolerance for the children on school holidays, but is nevertheless a loving and caring husband, father and uncle, and is extremely proud of his daughter. He is also inclined to be very absent-minded, as he finds it hard to switch off from his work and readjust to everyday life. Despite his fame as a scientist, his work does not earn him much money. In the first book of the series, it is established that he is brother to the father of Julian, Dick and Anne.
 *  is a very nice woman. In Five Go Off In a Caravan, she persuades the children's father to let them travel in the caravan. She's referred to as Mrs. Barnard in Five Get Into a Fix.
 * Mr. Roland is introduced in the second book. He is a tutor, and coaches the Five during the holidays. He then steals Uncle Quentin's important papers, but is caught by the Five.
 * Lucas appears in Five Have a Mystery to Solve.

Critical discussion
Blyton was a nature writer early in her career, and the books are strongly atmospheric, with a detailed but idealised presentation of the rural landscape. The books present children exploring this landscape without parental supervision as natural and normal. Pete Cash of the English Association has noted that the children "are allowed to go off on their own to an extent that today would contravene the Child Protection Act (1999) and interest Social Services."

The books are written in a nostalgic style even for the time they were written, avoiding reference to specific political events or technological developments. Cash noted that the characters do not watch television apart from one appearance in 1947, or even make much use of radios, despite George's father's work presumably involving advanced technology.

The books have been criticised for being repetitive, with repeated use of stock elements such as obnoxious, unfriendly people who turn out to be criminals and the discovery of a secret passageway. Blyton wrote rapidly and could finish a book in a week, which meant that unlike other book series of the period, such as Nancy Drew or The Hardy Boys, she was able to maintain control of her creations and write all the stories in a series herself.

The treatment of girls in the books provides a contrast, with Anne, the youngest and most fragile character, a contrast to the brash and headstrong George.

Floating timeline
The seemingly perpetual youth of the Famous Five, who experience a world of apparently endless holidays while not ageing significantly, is known as a floating timeline. Floating timelines allow for an episodic series with no defined end-point, but at the expense of losing a sense of the characters growing up. J. K. Rowling commented of her Harry Potter series that she deliberately intended to avoid this in her writing: "in book four the hormones are going to kick in – I don't want him stuck in a state of permanent pre-pubescence like poor Julian in the Famous Five!"

Enid Blyton's "Famous Five" novel series
Blyton also wrote a number of short stories featuring the characters, which were collected together in 1995 as Five Have a Puzzling Time, and Other Stories.
 * 1) Five on a Treasure Island (1942)
 * 2) Five Go Adventuring Again (1943)
 * 3) Five Run Away Together (1944)
 * 4) Five Go to Smuggler's Top (1945)
 * 5) Five Go Off in a Caravan (1946)
 * 6) Five on Kirrin Island Again (1947)
 * 7) Five Go Off to Camp (1948)
 * 8) Five Get into Trouble (1949)
 * 9) Five Fall into Adventure (1950)
 * 10) Five on a Hike Together (1951)
 * 11) Five Have a Wonderful Time (1952)
 * 12) Five Go Down to the Sea (1953)
 * 13) Five Go to Mystery Moor (1954)
 * 14) Five Have Plenty of Fun (1955)
 * 15) Five on a Secret Trail (1956)
 * 16) Five Go to Billycock Hill (1957)
 * 17) Five Get into a Fix (1958)
 * 18) Five on Finniston Farm (1960)
 * 19) Five Go to Demon's Rocks (1961)
 * 20) Five Have a Mystery to Solve (1962)
 * 21) Five Are Together Again (1963)

Claude Voilier
There are also books written originally in French by Claude Voilier (the Five have long been extremely popular in translation - by Voilier - in the French-speaking parts of Europe) and later translated into English. The Voilier titles are:

 * 1) Les Cinq sont les plus forts (1971; English title: The Famous Five and the Mystery of the Emeralds, English number: 2)
 * 2) Les Cinq au bal des espions (1971; English title: The Famous Five in Fancy Dress, English number: 7)
 * 3) Le Marquis appelle les Cinq (1972; English title: The Famous Five and the Stately Homes Gang, English number: 1)
 * 4) Les Cinq au Cap des tempêtes (1972; English title: The Famous Five and the Missing Cheetah, English number: 3)
 * 5) Les Cinq à la Télévision (1973; English title: The Famous Five Go on Television, English number: 4)
 * 6) Les Cinq et les pirates du ciel (1973; English title: The Famous Five and the Hijackers, English number: 13)
 * 7) Les Cinq contre le masque noir (1974; English title: The Famous Five Versus the Black Mask, English number: 6)
 * 8) Les Cinq et le galion d'or (1974; English title: The Famous Five and the Golden Galleon, English number: 5)
 * 9) Les Cinq font de la brocante (1975; English title: The Famous Five and the Inca God, English number: 9)
 * 10) Les Cinq se mettent en quatre (1975; English title: The Famous Five and the Pink Pearls, English number: 18)
 * 11) Les Cinq dans la cité secrète (1976; English title: The Famous Five and the Secret of the Caves, English number: 12)
 * 12) La fortune sourit aux Cinq (1976; English title: The Famous Five and the Cavalier's Treasure, English number: 10)
 * 13) Les Cinq et le rayon Z (1977; English title: The Famous Five and the Z-Rays, English number: 17)
 * 14) Les Cinq vendent la peau de l'ours (1977; English title: The Famous Five and the Blue Bear Mystery, English number: 8)
 * 15) Les Cinq aux rendez-vous du diable (1978; English title: The Famous Five in Deadly Danger, English number: 15)
 * 16) Du neuf pour les Cinq (1978; English title: The Famous Five and the Strange Legacy, English number: 11)
 * 17) Les Cinq et le trésor de Roquépine (1979; English title: The Famous Five and the Knights' Treasure, English Number: 16)
 * 18) Les Cinq et le diamant bleu (1979; reprinted in 1980 as Les Cinq et le rubis d'Akbar; (The Five and the Rubies Of Akbar))
 * 19) Les Cinq jouent serré (1980; English title: The Famous Five and the Strange Scientist, English number: 14)
 * 20) Les Cinq en croisière (1980; never translated into English; "The Five on a Cruise")
 * 21) Les Cinq contre les fantômes (1981; never translated into English; "The Five Against the Ghosts")
 * 22) Les Cinq en Amazonie (1983; never translated into English; "The Five in Amazonia")
 * 23) Les Cinq et le trésor du pirate (1984; never translated into English; "The Five and the Pirate's Treasure")
 * 24) Les Cinq contre le loup-garou (1985; never translated into English; "The Five against the werewolf")

The German "Geisterbände"
In Germany, two books came out with a questionable author. The titles are:

Although Enid Blyton is named as author on the cover, the books were most likely written by German author Brigitte Blobel, who is credited as the translator. The books were recalled after the first edition owing to copyright issues, and are now rare and high-priced collector's items.
 * 1) Fünf Freunde auf der verbotenen Insel ("Five Friends on the Forbidden Island") (1977)
 * 2) Fünf Freunde und der blaue Diamant ("Five Friends and the Blue Diamond") (1979)

Films
The Children's Film Foundation made two films based on Famous Five books: Five on a Treasure Island, in 1957, and Five Have a Mystery to Solve, in 1964.

Two of the Famous Five stories by Enid Blyton have been filmed by Danish director Katrine Hedman. The cast consisted of Danish actors and were originally released in Danish. Ove Sprogøe stars as Uncle Quentin. The movies are:  (Five and the Spies) (1969) and De 5 i fedtefadet (Famous Five Get in Trouble) (1970).

All four of the films have been released on DVD in their respective countries.

In Germany, a series of movies have been released:
 * Fünf Freunde (2012, based on Five on Kirrin Island Again, with Marcus Harris in a small role)
 *  (2013, based on Five Get into Trouble)
 *  (2014, based on Five on a Treasure Island and Five Fall into Adventure)
 *  (2015)
 *  (2018, literally "Five Friends and the Valley of Dinosaurs")

1978–79 series
The Famous Five television series was produced by Southern Television and Portman Productions for ITV in the UK, in 26 episodes of thirty minutes (including time for advertisements). It starred Michele Gallagher as Georgina, Marcus Harris as Julian, Jennifer Thanisch as Anne, Gary Russell as Dick, Toddy Woodgate as Timmy, Michael Hinz as Uncle Quentin and Sue Best as Aunt Fanny. It also starred Ronald Fraser, John Carson, Patrick Troughton, James Villiers, Cyril Luckham and Brian Glover. The screenplays were written by Gloria Tors, Gail Renard, Richard Carpenter and Richard Sparks. The episodes were directed by Peter Duffell, Don Leaver, James Gatward and Mike Connor. The series was produced by Don Leaver and James Gatward. Most of the outdoor filming was done in the New Forest and parts of Dorset and Devon.The series was set in the present day, fifteen years after Blyton's last novel in the series.

Of the original 21 novels, three were not adapted for this series; Five on a Treasure Island and Five Have a Mystery to Solve because the Children's Film Foundation still own the film and TV rights to the books, while Five Have Plenty of Fun did not fit in the production schedule. Due to the success of the series, Southern Television were keen to make another season of episodes, but the Enid Blyton estate forbade them to create original stories.

The 1978 series was originally released on video by Portman Productions with reasonable regularity between 1983 and 1999, many of which are still easy to find second-hand, although the sound and picture quality is not always what it could be. A four-disc DVD collection, containing 23 of the 26 episodes produced for the 1978 series (and two episodes from the 1996 series) was released in region 4 (Australia and New Zealand) in 2005. The box and disc art identify it as a release of the 1996 series. (The distributor had licensed the 1996 series, but due to an administrative glitch was supplied with master tapes and artwork for the 1978 series.) The error was corrected in a later release.

A seven-DVD set containing the entire series and extensive bonus material was released in October 2010 in Germany by Koch Media; although there was an option to choose either the original English or German dubbed versions, the English version had non-removable German subtitles across the bottom of the screen on every episode. The same company released the DVD set in the UK (without the non-removable subtitles) on 25 June 2012.

A four DVD set containing all 26 episodes, without additional content, was released for region 4 (Australia and New Zealand) in late 2011, as Enid Blyton's The Famous Five: The Complete Collection. (The Finnish punk band Widows (of Helsinki) made three different cover versions of the theme song, the first in early 1979, as did the Irish indie outfit Fleur, in 1996.)

1995 series
A later series, The Famous Five, initiated by Victor Glynn of Portman Zenith was aired first in 1995, a co-production between a number of companies including Tyne Tees Television, HTV, Zenith North and the German channel ZDF. Unlike the previous TV series, this set the stories in the 1950s, around when they were written. It dramatised all the original books. Of the juvenile actors the best known is probably Jemima Rooper, who played George. Julian was portrayed by Marco Williamson, Dick by Paul Child, and Anne by Laura Petela. In this series, because of the slang meaning of the word fanny, Aunt Fanny, played by Mary Waterhouse, was known as Aunt Frances. (In some but not all recent reprints of the book, the character has been re-christened Aunt Franny.)

The 1995 series was released in its entirety on VHS video. A three-disc DVD collection, containing 13 of the 26 episodes of the 1995 series, was released in Australia and New Zealand in 2005, and is marked "Revised Edition" to avoid confusion with the previous release of the 1979 series with 1995 artwork. Other episodes have reportedly been released on DVD in Europe, but only the adaptation of Five on a Treasure Island was released on DVD in the UK.

Famous 5: On the Case
A new Famous Five animated TV series began airing in 2008. Famous 5: On the Case is set in modern times and features the children of the original Famous Five: Max (the son of Julian and Brandine), Dylan (son of Dick and Michelle), Jo (daughter of George and Ravi – a tomboy who, like her mother, prefers a shorter name to her given name Jyoti) and Allie (daughter of Anne and John). It has not been stated whether their dog is a descendant of Timmy. The new series was first announced in 2005, and is a co-production of Chorion (which currently owns all Famous Five rights) and Marathon, in association with France 3 and The Disney Channel. Disney confirmed their involvement in December 2006. Stories were developed by Douglas Tuber and Tim Maile, who have previously written for Lizzie McGuire. Chorion claims on its website that "these new programmes will remain faithful to the themes of mystery and adventure central to Enid Blyton's classic series of books." A total of 26 episodes, each 22 minutes long, were produced.

2023 series
On 26 June 2023, the BBC announced that filming has begun on a new adaptation of The Famous Five, in co-production with the German channel ZDF. The series will comprise three episodes, each 90 minutes long, and will aim to bring the stories to a "progressive new audience". The series creator is Danish film director Nicolas Winding Refn.

Audio dramas
Hodder Headline produced in the late 1990s audio dramas in English, which were published on audio cassette and CD. All 21 episodes of the original books were dramatised.

The 21 original stories by Enid Blyton have been released in the 1970s as Fünf Freunde audio dramas in Germany as well. The speakers were the German dubbing artists for Gallagher, Thanisch, Russell and Harris, the leads of the first television series.

For the sequels (not written by Blyton and decidedly more "modern" action-oriented stories) the speakers were replaced by younger ones, because it was felt that they sounded too mature. In addition to the original Blyton books, another 110+ stories have subsequently been released and published as radio plays and more than 30 books different from the radioplays in Germany. They are based on the original characters, but written by various German writers.

Theatre
A 1997 musical was made to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Enid Blyton's birth with the title The Famous Five and later released on DVD as The Famous Five – Smuggler's Gold – The Musical. Principal actors: Elizabeth Marsland, Lyndon Ogbourne, Matthew Johnson, Vicky Taylor, Jon Lee, Director: Roz Storey and also in the five

A brand new musical adaptation was premièred at the Tabard Theatre on 8 December 2009 and played until 10 January 2010.

Gamebooks
Two sets of gamebooks in a Choose Your Own Adventure style have been published. These books involve reading small sections of print and being given two or more options to follow, with a different page number for each option. The first series of these, written by Stephen Thraves, featured stories loosely based on the original books. They were issued in plastic wallets with accessories such as maps, dice and codebooks. The gamebooks were titled as follows:

 * 1) The Wreckers' Tower Game, based on Five Go Down to the Sea
 * 2) The Haunted Railway Game, based on Five Go Off to Camp
 * 3) The Whispering Island Game, based on Five Have a Mystery to Solve
 * 4) The Sinister Lake Game, based on Five On a Hike Together
 * 5) The Wailing Lighthouse Game, based on Five Go to Demon's Rocks
 * 6) The Secret Airfield Game, based on Five Go to Billycock Hill
 * 7) The Shuddering Mountain Game, based on Five Get into a Fix
 * 8) The Missing Scientist Game, based on Five Have a Wonderful Time

The second series, written by Mary Danby, was entitled "The Famous Five and You". These consisted of abridged versions of the original text, with additional text for the alternative story routes. The books in this series were based on the first six original Famous Five books:

 * 1) The Famous Five and You Search for Treasure!
 * 2) The Famous Five and You Find Adventure!
 * 3) The Famous Five and You Run Away!
 * 4) The Famous Five and You Search for Smugglers!
 * 5) The Famous Five and You Take Off!
 * 6) The Famous Five and You Underground!

Comics
A weekly comic strip based on the 1978 television series was published in Look-in magazine from 1978 to 1980.

Six comic albums drawn by Bernard Dufossé and scripted by Serge Rosenzweig and Rafael Carlo Marcello were released in France between 1982 and 1986, under the title Le Club des Cinq. Most of comic books in the series are based on Famous Five books created by Claude Voilier. Books were released by Hachette Livre. The first three of these volumes have also been released in English, under the name Famous Five. The titles included "Famous Five and the Golden Galleon" (which featured a sunken ship that was laden with gold with the Five fending off villains seeking to make off with the gold, "Famous Five and the Treasure of the Templars", where it transpires that Kirrin Castle is actually a Templar Castle that houses their hidden treasure which the Five ultimately secure with the help of members of the order, and "Famous Five and the Inca God" which was set in an antiquities museum and dealt with the theft of an Incan fetish.

Beginning in September 1985 a series of monthly Comic Magazine titles Enid Blyton's Adventure Magazine were published. Each issue published a full length illustrative comic book story adapted from Famous 5 Novels. The series came to end in the 1990s.

The Comic Strip Presents...
The Five inspired the parody Five Go Mad in Dorset (1982) and its 1983 sequel Five Go Mad on Mescalin, both produced by The Comic Strip, in which the characters express sympathies with Nazi Germany and opposition to the Welfare State, homosexuals, immigrants and Jews, in an extremely broad parody not so much of Blyton but of views perceived to be common in the 1950s. The parodies were deliberately set towards the end of the original Famous Five "era" (1942–63) so as to make the point that the books were already becoming outmoded while they were still being written. Both parodies made use of Famous Five set pieces, such as the surrender of the criminals at the end when Julian states "We're the Famous Five!", the arrival of the police just in the nick of time, and the appeal for "some of your home-made ices" at a village shop. Unlike the books, the four children in the Comic Strip parody are all siblings, and none is the child of Aunt Fanny and Uncle Quentin.

The series was revived in 2012 with Five Go to Rehab, with the original cast reprising their roles, now well into middle-age. Reuniting for Dick's birthday after decades apart, the four and Toby lament how their lives took unexpected paths while Dick drags them on another bicycle adventure, which he had meticulously planned for fourteen years. In a reversal, George had married a series of wealthy men whom she cuckolded with, among others, one of her stepsons (her continuing penchant for bestiality with the latest Timmy is also implied); whereas Anne has become a strongly opinionated vegan spinster and is suspected by Dick of being a "dyke" – an accusation made against George by Toby in the original Five Go Mad in Dorset. George and Julian have been committed to an alcoholics' sanatorium, the latter owes a large debt to African gangsters, and Anne recently served a prison sentence for setting her nanny aflame. Robbie Coltrane reprised both of his roles. Five Go to Rehab utilises a form of a floating timeline; although the original films' events are said to have taken place thirty years in the past and "five years after the war", the reunion film appears to be set approximately contemporaneous to its filming.

Others
Parodies began early: in 1964, only the year after the last book was published, John Lennon in his work In His Own Write had the short story The Famous Five through Woenow Abbey. Amidst a plethora of deliberate misspellings, he lists ten members of the Five, and a dog named Cragesmure.

Viz comic has parodied the series' style of writing and type of stories on a number of occasions.

In the late eighties, Australian comedy team The D-Generation parodied The Famous Five on their breakfast radio show as a five-part serial entitled The Famous Five Get Their Teeth Kicked In. The parody was based on the first book Five on a Treasure Island.

The fourth short story in Fearsome Tales for Fiendish Kids by Jamie Rix is named "The Chipper Chums Go Scrumping", which is about five children in 1952 on a picnic in Kent during the summer holidays. After their nap, the youngest wants an apple to eat so the children decide to steal from a nearby orchard, but they are caught by the owner, who is armed with a shotgun. It was later adapted for the Grizzly Tales for Gruesome Kids cartoon, which aired on CITV in 2000.

A 2005 story in The Guardian also parodies the Famous Five. It argues that Anne, Dick, George and Julian are caricatures rather than characters, portraying Anne as having no life outside of domestic labour. It highlights what the writer, Lucy Mangan, considers to be the power struggle between Dick, George and Julian while Anne is sidelined.

On 31 October 2009, the BBC programme The Impressions Show featured a sketch in which Ross Kemp meets The Famous Five. It was a parody of his Sky One show, Ross Kemp on Gangs.

British comedian John Finnemore did a radio sketch in which Julian and George run into each other as adults and reminisce. It is revealed that Julian has gone on to a career as a smuggler and regularly has to deal with copycat groups of children trying to thwart his plans. George is a happily married mother, Dick has gone to live in a commune in America, and Anne has just been released from prison having murdered a man with a ginger beer bottle.

Bert Fegg's Nasty Book for Boys and Girls features "The Famous Five Go Pillaging", – a short story which parodies the writing style of Enid Blyton; five children witness the collapse of Roman imperialism and their friends and family are slaughtered by 9000 invading Vikings.

Website The Daily Mash reported a lost Blyton manuscript titled "Five Go Deporting Gypsies".

A spoof series of five books written by Bruno Vincent was published in November 2016. The books are titled Five Give Up the Booze, Five Go Gluten Free, Five Go On A Strategy Away Day, Five Go Parenting and Five on Brexit Island. Vincent went on to write several more titles in the series: Five at the Office Christmas Party, Five Get Gran Online, Five Get On the Property Ladder, Five Go Bump in the Night, Five Escape Brexit Island, Five Get Beach Body Ready, Five Lose Dad in the Garden Centre, and Five Forget Mother's Day.

In November 2017, Return to Kirrin was released, written by Neil and Suzy Howlett. Set in 1979, it involves the Five (now middle-aged) reuniting on Kirrin Island, to discuss Julian's plans to develop Kirrin into a theme resort. Julian has become a successful stockbroker, Dick is a well-meaning but inept and overweight policeman, Anne is a worrisome housewife, and George is a feminist community worker (with her flatulent bulldog Gary in tow). Adventures then ensue, involving a host of other original characters.

title: The Famous Five