Old-fashioned language and quaint illustrations are part of the ageless appeal of a classic children’s book, so stop modernising them: this is a growing plea from the parents of young readers – and it seems publishers are beginning to listen.

Last month’s decision to turn back to the original look and vocabulary of the Famous Five books by Enid Blyton has opened the door for another classic children’s author, a forgotten star of storytelling, to be republished, as written, this autumn. Convinced that the best stories stand the test of time, editors at Pikku Books are to bring out original versions of stories by writer Elizabeth Clark, once a familiar sight on nursery bookshelves.

“There’s always going to be a market there for an elegant turn of phrase and a beautifully crafted story,” said Elena Sapsford, founder of Pikku. “As a child, there are a few well-known classics you work your way through, but it is quite obvious there must have been more good writing going on, and often things are out of print just because copyright contracts have been lost.”

Clark was a Winchester vicar’s eldest daughter, born in 1875. She found her vocation telling stories to the children in her village and began to teach others, moving to London and becoming a lecturer at teachers’ training colleges as well as the author of a series of successful children’s books, often illustrated by the acclaimed Nina Brisley.

Clark’s stories, including Dobbin and the Silver Shoes and The Cat that Climbed the Christmas Tree, were often drawn from foreign folklore and legend and many were broadcast on the BBC’s Children’s Hour radio show in the 1920s. Sapsford came across the writer when secondhand editions were given to her family, and she then set about tracking down the Clark literary estate.

“You have to become a detective because there was a lot of poor record-keeping in many publishing companies and I had to dig quite deep,” she said. “I really don’t think they need any change of vocabulary. People are looking for something fresh but we tend to forget that for young children everything is new. There is no modern or old-fashioned, and no bias or prejudice.”

In 2010 the publishing house Hachette, new owner of the Blyton estate, announced it would make “sensitive text revisions” to 21 Famous Five books. It was responding to market research suggesting children were no longer drawn to the tales about the child detectives who drank “lashings of ginger beer” because of Blyton’s dated language. So “tinker” became “traveller” and “awful swotter” became “bookworm”, while “mother and father” were updated to “mum and dad”.

But last month Anne McNeil, the publisher at the Hodder imprint in charge of the books, admitted that the new “sensitive reworking” had not gone down well with readers. “The feedback we have had six years on shows that the love for the Famous Five remains intact, and changing mother to mummy, pullover to jumper, was not required,” she said.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Hodder has said a reworking of the Famous Five by Enid Blyton, here with daughters Gillian and Imogen, had not gone down well. Photograph: George Konig/Getty Images

Hodder’s “classic” editions of the Famous Five stories do have some vocabulary changes to fit in with modern acceptable usage; for example, the use of the word “queer” is omitted.

The new Clark editions will be hardbacks with original full-colour plates and ink drawings by Brisley. Clark developed her stories after telling them to children, noticing what they enjoyed most. She was also expert at self-publicising, putting out a pamphlet to promote her skills as a public speaker and lecturer. Her claims do not appear to be overblown, though, because an article about her in the Evening Standard, written not long before the first world war, also praises her talent: “Sceptics might have fancied that the magic of storytelling had been long-ago swept away by faster currents. Who has time in days like the present to listen to tales of heroes … which seem so far away from the common sense we live by?”

Sapsford found Clark’s great-niece living in Lincolnshire and so secured the chance to bring out her work for a new audience.

“Publishers always want to move on, and so things fall out of print for no good reason,” Sapsford said. “The proof is that Clark’s book Father Christmas and the Donkey is still in print and very popular in Germany.”