October Featured Series!

Nancy Drew Series:

 

Nancy Drew is a fictional character in a juvenile fiction mystery fiction series created by publisher Edward Stratemeyer. The character first appeared in 1930; the books have been ghostwritten by a number of authors and are published under the collective pseudonym Carolyn Keene. Over the decades the character has evolved in response to changes in US culture and tastes. The books were extensively revised, beginning in 1959, largely to eliminate racist stereotypes, with arguable success. Many scholars agree that in the revision process, the heroine's original character was changed to a less assertive and more feminine character. In the 1980s an older and more professional Nancy emerged in a new series, The Nancy Drew Files, that included romantic plots for the sleuth. In 2004 the original Nancy Drew Mystery Stories series, begun in 1930, was ended and a new series, Girl Detective, was launched, in which the title character drives a hybrid electric vehicle and uses a cell phone. Illustrations of the character have also evolved over time to reflect the Nancy Drew type in contemporary terms. The character has proved continuously popular worldwide: at least 80 million copies of the books have been sold, and the books have been translated into over 45 languages. Nancy Drew has featured in five films, two television shows, and a number of popular computer games; she also appears in a variety of merchandise sold over the world.

 

As taken from Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Drew.

 

About the Authors: Carolyn Keene

Edward Stratemeyer, the founder of the Syndicate, hired writers, beginning with Mildred Wirt, later Mildred Wirt Benson, to write the manuscripts for the Nancy Drew books. The writers initially were paid $125 for each book and were required by their contract to give up all rights to the work and to maintain confidentiality.

 

Benson and Harriet Adams (Stratemeyer's daughter) are often credited as the primary writers of Nancy Drew books under the pseudonym Carolyn Keene; other ghostwriters who used this name to write Nancy Drew mysteries included James Duncan Lawrence, Walter Karig, Nancy Axelrad, Priscilla Doll, Charles Strong, Alma Sasse, Wilhelmina Rankin, George Waller Jr., Margaret Scherf, and Susan Wittig Albert. Also involved in the Nancy Drew writing process were Harriet Stratemeyer Adams's daughters, who gave input on the series and sometimes helped to choose book titles; the Syndicate's secretary, Harriet Otis Smith, who invented the characters of Nancy's friends Bess and George; and the editors at Grosset and Dunlap.

In 1978, the Stratemeyer Syndicate changed publishers to Simon & Schuster, a move that the former publishers, Grosset and Dunlap, went to court to prevent the switch, claiming a breach of contract. The decision was made in favor of the Syndicate, stating that they could choose which publisher they would like to go with subsequent entries in the series. However, since the editors at Grosset and Dunlap were so heavily involved in writing the Drew books, they won the rights to the volumes that they had published.

In 1986, the Syndicate was bought by publishers Simon & Schuster; the Drew books are now handled by Mega-Books, a New York book packager.

 

As taken from Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carolyn_Keene.