I think Nesbit didn't see all that much of her kids either - often too busy writing, to keep them in comfort.
Kenneth Grahame wrote Wind in the Willows for his son, who later committed suicide. Christopher Robin Milne hated till his dying day being the character in a kids' book. Lewis Carroll may have been some sort of repressed paedophile. Lots of children's writers have unconfortable relationships with their own children. It's odd; but Blyton's not alone on that score.
Even Alison Uttley seems to have been a right toad in real life.
http://www.guardian.c...le-grey-rabbit-uttley
tigerlily, what I was getting at wan't so much that she avoided men, just that she would always put her own interests and her own gratification first because she didn't trust anyone else. She sounds like a pretty horrible person, but there may have been reasons for this.