Rediscovering Nancy Drew

Part III. Collecting and Studying Nancy Drew

Collecting and Studying Nancy Drew IfI were to choose a book character to come alive to make this a better world, it would be Nancy. But Nancy is not a real person and never will be. Her books can make a difference though. She influences many young girls growing up in a cruel world. I think a book character, by displaying honesty, courage, persistence, generosity and by valuing good friends can make a difference. Ifall characters in books and movies were like Nancy, the world might be a better place to live. -CLAIRE VICTORIA FOLKINS, AGE 11, GRADE 5, PENN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL, NORTH LIBERTY, IOWA ri\ til ost of the factual information that we have about Nancy ~~ Drew's history, like other aspects of popular culture, has been painstakingly unearthed by the tireless digging of ardent fans and collectors of series books. Because these mass-produced products have been disparaged by book people ranging from librarians to teachers and fine booksellers, the books that have been sold by the millions would be lost for future study if not for the collectors. Inspired mostly by the nostalgia reflected in the stories told throughout this book, collectors have devoted their leisure time and disposable income to finding, accumulating, and getting to know everything they can about the books. They have formed organizations oflike-minded collectors ofold series books, developed newsletters and fanzines, and held conventions and informal meetings to buy, sell, and trade books and to exchange information about them. Although there are organizations, newsletters, and conventions of collectors and fans of other less popular series, such as the Judy Bolton and Betsy Tacy books, no institutions have formed around Nancy Drew in particular. Her collectors and fans have dispersed themselves among the more general groups of collectors and gleaned information from the study of other series. At least part of the explanation is that information about the Stratemeyer Syndicate and its books has been closely held and shrouded in mystery. First Harriet Stratemeyer Adams and the staff of the syndicate perpetuated the secrecy surrounding the ghostwriting process that made its books so popular. More recently, the Stratemeyer business has been engulfed in a large entertainment conglomerate which had shipped the company files off to exile in a warehouse in New Jersey. The collectors have pieced together the chronology of the hundreds of editions of Nancy Drew that now number more than two hundred, using every skill in the detective's tool kit. They have dissected , cataloged, and committed to memory the developing characters , the plots, and even the dialogue particularly of the original editions . Like Christian fundamentalists in full command of the text of the Bible, some collectors can cite chapter and verse in response to virtually any question on the details of the stories. In fact, we have called on their store ofknowledge quite often when readers and journalists have posed questions we could not answer. As they have accumulated books and gathered information 145 146 COLLECTING AND STUDYING NANCY DREW about the books as material products, the collectors have by necessity probed the conditions of production, the arrangements with the writers, and, as Geoffrey Lapin reports in chapter 5, the identity of Carolyn Keene. To explore this closely guarded information, collectors have treasured every note and memo and ancillary document they could find, both as material objects having sentimental and economic value and as useful information to help answer questions. Like the collectors, many of the academic students of Nancy Drew were led to the study of series books by rediscovering fond memories oftheir childhoods, although some approached the subject retrospectively through the controversies among librarians, educators , and cultural critics. Even in the field of popular culture, and certainly in those disciplines that have officially discredited the books, the study of children's series fiction, especially girls' fiction, has not been central or highly valued. The sort of passion that drives collectors is suspect in scholars, so scholars have, with some exceptions , done their work without using or acknowledging the work of the collectors. As the study of kids' series books has not been quite respectable , researchers have for the most part approached these books quite conservatively. They have encountered the books and their history through the theories and systematic methods of the humanist and the social scientist, which often distill the life and charm out of the books. Their studies have been rather narrow. Suffering from...