Rediscovering Nancy Drew

Part I. Creating and Publishing Nancy Drew

Creating and Publishing Nancy Drew One ofmy keenest friends lives in a book. She travels in my school bag in our car. She has gone with me to Texas and to Illinois. And even though she is a girl, she spends a lot oftime in my room. Her name is Nancy Drew. I met her after I read my way through all ofFrank and Joe Hardy's adventures. Nancy Drew has grown to be one ofmy most cherished friends because ofher courage, her detective skills, her quick thinking, and her independence. IfI could ever get over the fright, I would like to be a detective. My good friend Nancy Drew taught me that. Mildred Benson told me that Nancy Drew was a lot like her. I think everyone who reads her stories would like to be a lot like Nancy. -MIKE MEFFORD, AGE 13, GRADE 8, PEKIN MIDDLE SCHOOL, PACKWOOD, IOWA ri\ ~ ancy Drew was the last creation of Edward Stratemeyer, who ~ ~ perfected the process of developing, mass producing, and marketing exceptionally popular children's series books. Signing writers to contracts that bound them to secrecy about their part in the process , he shrouded the business in mystery his successors have perpetuated . But as in all mysteries, clues have been left along the way enticing collectors and scholars alike to piece together answers to questions about exactly how the books were produced and what the roles of writers, editors, and marketers have been in making the series a success. The history ofNancy Drew as a product ofthe Stratemeyer Syndicate is far more complex than the relative simplicity of the genre books would suggest. For example, six different series of Nancy Drews are being published today, each with its own publication history . The first Nancy Drew Mystery Stories were published in several blue-covered editions until 1961. Then many of them were rewritten and new ones were added in a series with yellow spines. Both series were published by Grosset & Dunlap, which still publishes the revised and original yellow-spine editions. Simon & Schuster began publishing new stories in paperback editions of the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories series in 1979 and added a new series for older children, the Nancy Drew Files, in 1986. Nancy Drew joined forces with the Hardy Boys in a new series of SuperMysteries begun in 1988. Applewood Books published facsimile editions ofthe first three Nancy Drews in 1991 and added two more in 1994. Nancy's origins as an eight-year-old sleuth are the focus of the Nancy Drew Notebooks series begun in 1994 for second to fourth graders. "Nancy Drew Titles, 1930-1994" lists these books. A clearer picture of the Stratemeyer history has quite recently begun to emerge as collectors of children's books and scholars ofchildren 's literature and popular culture have mined a rather limited store of available source materials and discovered the identity of some of the living writers of the early books. The essays in this section are primarily firsthand accounts of the history of the publication of Nancy Drew books. They offer glimpses into the production of the books from several unique and original perspectives ranging over the 65-year history of the books from the first editions to the current paperback series and recent reprints of the originals. The 25 26 CREATING AND PUBLISHING NANCY DREW emphasis in the essays is on how the work has been done from the vantage point of those who have written, edited, and marketed the books and others who have devoted their professional and leisure time to solving the mysteries laid out by the syndicate. How the Nancy Drew stories were assigned, refined, packaged, and marketed is the subject of the essays and discussion in this section . Chapter 2, a historical essay by Deidre Johnson, a specialist in children's literature, illustrates how the stories were solicited and manuscripts edited to prepare Stratemeyer children's books for the market. Johnson is both the leading academic scholar on the work of the Stratemeyer Syndicate and a collector of series books who has worked with excerpts taken primarily from the few manuscripts that have circulated in the collectors' community. For want of access to the company's extensive files of manuscripts and correspondence, Johnson relies on examples drawn from both Nancy Drew books and other Stratemeyer series to show how the ghostwriters worked with the editors in producing the original books. Her...