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Nancy, Tom and Assorted Friends in the Stratemeyer Syndicate Then and Now

1978; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 7; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/chl.0.0318

1543-3374

Ken Donelson,

Library Science and Administration

Nancy, Tom and Assorted Friends in the Stratemeyer Syndicate Then and Now Ken Donelson (bio) Around the time when my daughter Sherri was nine or ten, she received a nearly complete set of Nancy Drew books from my sister. To say that I was pleased with my sister's gift would be an outrageous lie. As an English teacher still unsure of my role in life, I had all the self-righteous feelings I might have been expected to feel. "I am," I told myself, "an English teacher, guardian of the language, the last bastion against worldwide illiteracy, the champion of great literature, and my innocent daughter will be corrupted by the literary inanities of series books, worst of all by a series I had been taught to abhor." But I loved my sister and it was her gift and since Sherri was pleased, I took the American way out—I did nothing. Later, when I left the childhood stage of teaching and entered the world of reality and began to look at what kids like to read and were reading despite my increasingly faltering admonitions, I became more and more intrigued by the ubiquitous Nancy Drew books and the fascination kids—especially young girls—felt about Nancy. As I puzzled through the Sears-Roebuck catalogue-of-dreams Nancy personified to her readers, my lingering toleration dimmed and my respect for author Carolyn Keene grew slowly and even grudgingly. Much later after digging into series books, I found that there was no Carolyn Keene but only Edward Stratemeyer, his Literary Syndicate and his daughter Harriet Adams. I'll confess that I felt a mild let-down somewhat like the disappointment a few of my college students feel when they learn that Carolyn Keene is no more, indeed never was. But for me that let-down was replaced with awe as I dug into the machinations of the Stratemeyer syndicate. Probably no American writer has had such an impact as Edward Stratemeyer on so many young readers. About his professional life we know much, though some details elude us even today; but about his personal life we know very little. He was born on October 4, 1862, the son of a German immigrant who migrated to California during the Gold Rush era and then returned to New Jersey to help settle the estate of his dead brother. [End Page 17] In 1886 Stratemeyer was working at his step-brother's tobacco store in Elizabeth, New Jersey. Sometime during that year, Stratemeyer wrote an 18,000 word serial on brown wrapping paper, Victor Horton's Idea, and sent it off to Golden Days, a Philadelphia weekly boy's magazine. His father or step-brother may have originally questioned his foolish waste of time, but the $75.00 check Stratemeyer soon received alleviated their worries, and his father urged him to continue writing. He followed with Captain Bob's Secret, or, The Treasures of Bass Island, again for Golden Days. From about 1890 until 1896 he ran a stationery store in Newark and during that time contributed to Frank Munsey's Golden Argosy. In 1893, Stratemeyer was offered the editorship of Good News, a boys' weekly published by Street and Smith, one of America's leading publishers. His devout faith in hard work, his writing and his personal life paid off, as his stories for Good News eventually built the circulation to more than 200,000. In 1895 he edited Young Sports of America (after the twenty-second issue retitled Young People of America) and in 1896 Bright Days. His work at Street and Smith brought him acquaintance with the reading public, particularly young people, and with staff writers like Frederick Dey (author of Nick Carter), Upton Sinclair (who wrote the True Blue series under the pen name Ensign Clark Fitch), William T. Adams (the pen name of Oliver Optic), H. R. Gordon (the pen name of Edward S. Ellis), and Horatio Alger. Stratemeyer wrote several dime novels for the Log Cabin Library, the first being Crazy Bob, The Terror of Creede, under the pseudonyms Jim Bowie, Nat Woods, and Jim Daly. He also wrote women's serials for the New York Weekly...