Really want to know more about this, so this was a little treat to myself, second hand via the Internet.

This was a fascinating book - not exactly what I had been expecting, but then you can't necessarily complain about a book because it isn't what you were looking for. I grew up reading Nancy Drew books - some of what I guess must have been the revised originals, and the Nancy Drew Files (which were published after Harriet had died). Thing is, gullible as I am, I thought that Carolyn Keene was real and that she had written them all. Well, it's like Santa all over again when you read this book - Carolyn never existed.

Nancy's been going longer than I realised, coming out in the 30s with the Great Depression, and here's a random fact - first translation was into Norwegian. Rather than an intensive study into Nancy Drew herself, this book is the biography of a number of writers and publishers, a look at the development of children's publishing throughout the twentieth century, and actually a rather good and concise account of feminism and women's history in the USA throughout that period as well. When I say that this book wasn't quite what I was looking for was that I was wanting to read a lot more about the books and stories themsleves, how they'd developed over time. Also the ever changing illustrations, and I suppose just to read and see more of all that. I didn't realise that the first 30 odd books had actually all been rewritten at one point, one to take out old racial stereotypes that were not ok (a good thing) but also to tone down Nancy, so that she wasn't quite so bold and direct. I was reading these in the late 80s and early 90s, so I will have read the revised versions. I wonder how much of the writing style was lost in these revisions, which were pushed through at a breakneck speed from reading this story.

Yes, I suppose it's a bit of a churn-them-out production line, with slightly unbelieveable plots and corny characters, but there is a charm about these books, and they were so addictive as a child. And that becomes part of your own childhood nostalgia and history. I guess she's a worldwide phenomena, although this book only focuses on the USA. She was actually created by Stratmeyer, who had been writing that many kids books and series he simply didn't have enough hours in the day, and had to turn to hiring ghost writers to whom he gave synopsis to work to. Was it three or five Nancy books had been written, and they were just coming out, when he suddenly died. So sad that he never really got to see what would happen. His two daughters then took over the business, Harriet Adams being the main one to control and eventually write the Nancy Drew books, but in the beginning for the first 30 odd it was a woman called Mildred who was ghost writing them (with a pause when a man - I can't think of his name - wrote three). No idea who wrote them after Harriet's death - the book doesn't even consider this. Some of it is a bit sad and cynical, when you think of how these production lines of churning out books was pushing kids to buy buy buy, and how after the war, things just seemed to get more and more profit and money orientated, as though the joy of the stories and writing themselves seemed less important.

As I say, really interesting, but I feel that I need to still read another book on Nancy Drew, albeit a different type of book.