Overview
Three of the children, Julian, Dick and Anne Bannard, are brothers and sister. During their holidays, they are regularly sent to the seaside village of Kirrin to stay with their Aunt Fanny and Uncle Quentin, whose daughter, Georgina Kirrin, is a tomboy who insists on being called George. George owns a large mongrel dog, Timothy, who is very much part of the group and a character in his own right. Timmy accompanies the four children on every adventure.
The stories always take place in the children's school holidays when they have returned from their respective boarding schools. Every time they meet, they get caught up in an adventure, the location of which varies from book to book. Sometimes the scene is set close to George's family home at Kirrin Cottage in Cornwall: "Kirrin Island", a picturesque island owned by George and her family in Kirrin Bay, for example, presents many opportunities for adventure. 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. The settings, however, 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 the adventures, picnics, lemonade, bicycle trips, home-made food, raspberry pop and ginger beer.
In some of the books, the four children and Timmy are joined by other children. Some of these newcomers start off being disliked by the four children including the gypsy girl Jo, and Henrietta, another tomboy; and some of them are friends from the start, including Sooty and Tinker, both sons of Uncle Quentin's scientist friends.
Blyton always said that George was based on a real girl she had once known: in her later life, she admitted that the girl was herself.
Read more about this topic: The Famous Five (series)