View source for Stratemeyer Syndicate

{{Short description|Book packager in the US responsible for many young adult series}}
{{Infobox publisher
| name         = Stratemeyer Syndicate
| founder      = [[Edward Stratemeyer]]
| country      = United States
| genre        = Mystery and children
}}

The '''Stratemeyer Syndicate''' was an American [[book packaging]] company that produced a number of book series for children, including [[Nancy Drew]], [[The Hardy Boys]], the various [[Tom Swift]] series, the [[Bobbsey Twins]], the [[Rover Boys]], and others. It contracted the many pseudonymous authors who wrote the series from 1899 to 1987, and arranged the publishing by firms such as Grosset & Dunlap. In 1987 it was sold to [[Simon & Schuster]].<ref>{{Cite book|last=Plunkett-Powell|first=Karen|title=The Nancy Drew Scrapbook: 60 Years of America's Favorite Teenage Sleuth|publisher=St. Martin's Press|year=1993|isbn=978-0312098810|pages=29}}</ref>

== History ==
Created by [[Edward Stratemeyer]], the Stratemeyer Syndicate was the first [[Book packaging|book packager]] to have its books aimed at children, rather than adults. The Syndicate was wildly successful; at one time it was believed that the overwhelming majority  of the books children read in the United States were Stratemeyer Syndicate books, based on a 1922 study of over 36,000 American children.<ref>Romalov (1995), 118.</ref>

Stratemeyer's business acumen was in realizing that there was a huge, untapped market for children's books. The Stratemeyer Syndicate specialized in producing books that were meant primarily to be entertaining. In Stratemeyer's view, it was the thrill of feeling grown-up and the desire for a series of stories that made such reading attractive to children. Stratemeyer believed that this desire could be harnessed for profit. He founded the Stratemeyer Syndicate to produce books in an efficient, assembly-line fashion and to write them in such a way as to maximize their popularity.

The first series that Stratemeyer created was ''The [[Rover Boys]]'', published under the pseudonym [[Edward Stratemeyer|Arthur M. Winfield]] in 30 volumes between 1899 and 1926, which sold over five million copies.<ref>Rehak (2006), 8.</ref> ''[[Bobbsey Twins|The Bobbsey Twins]]'' first appeared in 1904 under the pseudonym [[Laura Lee Hope]], and ''[[Tom Swift]]'' in 1910 under the pseudonym [[Victor Appleton]].<ref name="Billman">Billman.</ref>

Stratemeyer published a number of books under his own name, but the books published under pseudonyms sold better. Stratemeyer realized that "he could offer more books each year if he dealt with several publishers and had the books published under a number of pseudonyms which he controlled."<ref name="Keeline">Keeline, "Stratemeyer Syndicate."</ref> Stratemeyer explained his strategy to a publisher, writing that "[a] book brought out under another name would, I feel satisfied, do better than another Stratemeyer book. If this was brought out under my own name, the trade on new Stratemeyer books would simply be cut into four parts instead of three."<ref>Rehak, (2006), 25.</ref>

Some time in the first decade of the twentieth century Stratemeyer realized that he could no longer juggle multiple volumes of multiple series, and he began hiring [[ghostwriter]]s, such as [[Mildred Benson]], [[Josephine Lawrence]], [[Howard R. Garis]]<ref name="Billman" /> and [[Leslie McFarlane]].<ref name="SS1" /> Stratemeyer continued to write some books, while writing plot outlines for others.

While mystery elements were occasionally present in these early series, the Syndicate later specialized in children's mystery series. This trend began in 1911, when Stratemeyer wrote and published ''The Mansion of Mystery'', under the pseudonym [[Chester K. Steele]].  Five more books were published in that mystery series, the last in 1928. These books were aimed at a somewhat older audience than his previous series. After that, the Syndicate focused on mystery series aimed at its younger base: ''[[The Hardy Boys]]'', which first appeared in 1927, ghostwritten by Leslie McFarlane and others; and ''[[Nancy Drew]]'', which first appeared in 1930, ghostwritten by [[Mildred Benson|Mildred Wirt Benson]], [[Walter Karig]], and others. Both series were immediate financial successes.<ref name="SS1" />

In 1930, Stratemeyer died, and the Syndicate was inherited by his two daughters, [[Harriet Adams|Harriet Stratemeyer Adams]] and Edna Stratemeyer Squier. Stratemeyer Squier sold her share to her sister Harriet within a few years. Adams introduced such series as ''[[The Dana Girls]]'' (1934), ''[[Tom Swift Jr.]]'', ''[[The Happy Hollisters]]'', and many others. In the 1950s, Adams began substantially revising old volumes in ''The Hardy Boys'' and ''Nancy Drew'' series, updating them by removing references to outdated cultural elements, such as "roadster". Racial slurs and stereotypes were also removed, and in some cases (such as ''[[The Secret at Shadow Ranch]]'' and ''[[The Mystery at the Moss-Covered Mansion]])'' entire [[Plot (narrative)|plot]]s were cast off and replaced with new ones. In part, these changes were motivated by a desire to make the books more up-to-date. [[Grosset & Dunlap]], the primary publisher of Stratemeyer Syndicate books, requested that the books' racism be excised, a project that Adams felt was unnecessary.<ref name="Rehak 2006, 243">Rehak (2006), 243.</ref> Grosset & Dunlap held firm; it had received an increasing number of letters from parents who were offended by the stereotypes present in the books, particularly in ''The Hardy Boys'' publications.<ref name="Rehak 2006, 243"/>

In the late 1970s, Adams decided it was time for Nancy and the Hardys to go into paperback, as the hardcover market was no longer what it had been.{{clarify|date=April 2016}} Grosset & Dunlap sued, citing "breach of contract, copyright infringement, and unfair competition".<ref>Johnson, Deirdre. ''Edward Stratemeyer and the Stratemeyer Syndicate.'' Page 16.</ref> The ensuing case let the world know, for the first time, that the Syndicate existed; the Syndicate had always gone to great lengths to hide its existence from the public, and ghostwriters were contractually obliged never to reveal their authorship.

Grosset & Dunlap was awarded the rights to ''The Hardy Boys'' and ''Nancy Drew'' volumes that it had published, but the Syndicate was judged free to take subsequent volumes elsewhere.<ref>Johnson, 17.</ref> Subsequent volumes were published by [[Simon & Schuster]].

Adams died in 1982. In 1984, Simon & Schuster purchased the syndicate from its partners&nbsp;— Edward Stratemeyer Adams, Camilla Adams McClave, Patricia Adams Harr, Nancy Axelrad, Lorraine Rickle, and Lilo Wuenn&nbsp;— and turned to Mega-Books, a book packager, to handle the writing process for new volumes.<ref>Plunkett-Powell (1993), 29.</ref>

==Writing guidelines==
{| class="toccolours" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; font-size: 85%; background:#c6dbf7; color:black; width:23em; max-width: 25%;" cellspacing="5"
| style="text-align: left;" |
"They don't have hippies in them," [Adams] said&nbsp;... "And none of the characters have love affairs or get pregnant or take dope."<ref>Klemesrud (1968).</ref>
|}

All Stratemeyer Syndicate books were written under certain guidelines, based on practices Stratemeyer began with his first series, the ''Rover Boys''.<ref name="Billman"/>

* All books would be part of a series.
* To establish more quickly if a series was likely to be successful, the first several volumes would be published at once. These first volumes are often called "breeders".<ref name="ReferenceA">Billman, Carol. ''The Secret of the Stratemeyer Syndicate.''</ref>
* The books would be written under a pseudonym. This would provide apparent continuity of authorship, even when an author died, and would disguise the fact that series were written by multiple ghostwriters and plot-outliners.
* The books would look as much like contemporary adult books as possible, with similar bindings and typefaces.<ref name="ReferenceA"/>
* The books would be of a predictable length.
* Chapters and pages should end mid-situation, to increase the reader's desire to keep reading.<ref name="ReferenceA"/>
* Each book would begin with a quick recap of all previous books in that series, in order to promote those books.<ref name="ReferenceA"/>
* Books might also end with a preview of the next volume in the series: "Nancy ... could not help but wonder when she might encounter as strange a mystery as the recent one. Such a case was to confront her soon, ''The Clue of the Whistling Bagpipes''".<ref>Keene, Carolyn. ''The Moonstone Castle Mystery''. Page 178.</ref>
* The books would be priced at 50 cents, rather than the more common 75 cents, $1.00, or $1.25.<ref>Plunkett-Powell, Karen. ''The Nancy Drew Scrapbook''. Page 16.</ref>
* Certain tropes and narrative elements were disallowed. Leslie McFarlane, for example, was required to revise two of his ''Hardy Boys'' characters, Chief Collig and Deputy Smuff, because their portrayal as incompetent police officers "fostered a disrespect for authority."<ref>{{cite web | author-last=Weingarten | author-first=Gene | title=The Hardy Boys the Final Chapter... | website=The Washington Post | date=1998-08-09 | url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/05/AR2005120501092_5.html | access-date=2025-09-21}}</ref> Characters also could not age or marry: protagonists of early series such as the ''Rover Boys'', ''Tom Swift'', and ''[[Ruth Fielding]]'' grew up and married, and sales dropped afterward, prompting this rule.<ref>Kismaric and Heiferman (2007), 20.</ref>

==Criticism==
For decades, libraries refused to carry any Syndicate books, considering them to be unworthy trash.<ref name="SS1">{{cite web| last=Andrews|first=Dale| title=The Hardy Boys Mystery | url=http://www.sleuthsayers.org/2013/08/the-hardy-boys-mystery_27.html |work=Children's books |publisher=SleuthSayers| location=Washington| date=2013-08-27}}</ref> Series books were considered to "cause 'mental laziness,' induce a 'fatal sluggishness,' and 'intellectual torpor.{{'"}}<ref>Romalov (1995), 115.</ref> Series books were considered to ruin a child's chances for gaining an appreciation of good literature (which was subsequently shown by one study not to be the case),<ref>Ross (1997).</ref> and to undermine respect for authority: "Much of the contempt for social conventions&nbsp;... is due to the reading of this poisonous sort of fiction."<ref>Rehak (2006), 97.</ref>

Franklin K. Mathiews, chief librarian for the [[Boy Scouts of America]], wrote that series books were a method, according to the title of one of his articles, for "Blowing Out the Boys' Brains",<ref>Romalov (1995), 117.</ref> and psychologist [[G. Stanley Hall]] articulated one of the most common concerns by asserting that series books would ruin girls in particular by giving them "false views of [life] ... which will cloud her life with discontent in the future".<ref>Romalov, Nancy Tillman. "Children's Series Books and the Rhetoric of Guidance: A Historical Overview." In ''Rediscovering Nancy Drew.'' Dyer, Carolyn Stewart, and Nancy Tillman Romalov, eds. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1995. Page 116.</ref>

None of this hurt sales and Stratemeyer was unperturbed, even when his books were banned from the Newark Public Library as early as 1901, writing to a publisher: "Personally it does not matter much to me. ...&nbsp;Taking them out of the Library has more than [[Streisand effect|tripled the sales]] in Newark."<ref>Rehak, Melanie. ''Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her.'' NY: Harcourt, 2005. Page 97-98.</ref>

==Foreign publications==

Some syndicate series were also reprinted in foreign countries. An early foreign version was a [[Ted Scott Flying Stories]] book, published in Germany in 1930 as ''Ted Scott Der Ozeanflieger.'' The artwork was generally changed when reprinted in other countries, and sometimes character names and other details were as well. For example, in Norway, translations of the Nancy Drew books were first published in 1941, the first European market to introduce the girl detective. “The translators changed the color of Nancy's car, shortened the text, and made the language easier to read; but they made no substantive changes” to the stories.<ref>Skjønsberg, Kari. "Nancy, a.k.a. Kitty, Susanne, Alice—in Norway and Other European Countries." ''The Lion and the Unicorn'', Volume 18, Number 1, June 1994, pp. 70-77.</ref> By the 1970s, Nancy Drew stories had “been translated into Spanish, Swedish, French, German, Dutch, Italian, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, and Icelandic.<ref>Wertheimer, Barbara S. and Carol Sands. "'Nancy Drew' Revisited." ''Language Arts'', Vol. 52, No. 8 (NOV/DEC 1975), pp. 1131-1161.</ref>

Other series reprinted outside the States include ''The Dana Girls'', ''The Hardy Boys'' and the ''Bobbsey Twins'' (in Australia, France, Sweden, and the UK). These other series first appeared around the 1950s outside the United States.

The second Stratemeyer Syndicate series to be reprinted outside the United States appears to have been the first two books in the [[Don Sturdy]] series, although exact dates of printing are unknown.  Those were ''The Desert of Mystery'' and ''The Big Snake Hunters''. There are two British versions known of the latter book; both were printed by The Children's Press, one in the 1930s and the second, with different cover art, in the 1950s.

==See also==
* [[List of Stratemeyer Syndicate series]]

==Notes==
{{reflist |20em}}

==References==

* {{cite book |title=The Secret of the Stratemeyer Syndicate |last=Billman |first=Carol |year=1986 |publisher=Ungar |isbn=0-8044-2055-6 |url=https://archive.org/details/secretofstratem00caro |url-access=registration }}
* {{cite book |title=Edward Stratemeyer and the Stratemeyer Syndicate |last=Johnson |first=Deirdre |year=1993 |publisher=Twayne |isbn=0-8057-4006-6 |url=https://archive.org/details/edwardstratemeye0000john |ref=Johnson |url-access=registration }}
* {{cite book |title="The Nancy Drew Mythtery Stories" in Nancy Drew and Her Sister Sleuths |last=Keeline |first=James D |editor1-last=Cornelius |editor1-first=Michael G |editor2-last=Gregg |editor2-first=Melanie E |year=2008 |publisher=McFarland & Company |isbn=978-0-7864-3995-9 }}
* {{cite web
  | last = Keeline
  | first = James D
  | title = Stratemeyer Syndicate
  | url = http://www.keeline.com/StratemeyerSyndicate.html
  | access-date = 19 April 2009
  | archive-date = 31 January 2009
  | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20090131150516/http://www.keeline.com/StratemeyerSyndicate.html
  | url-status = dead
  }}
* {{cite book |title=The Mysterious Case of Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys |last=Kismaric |first=Carole |author2=Marvin Heiferman  |year=2007 |publisher=Fireside |isbn=978-1-4165-4945-1 |ref=Kismaric and Heiferman}}
* Klemesrud, Judy (4 April 1968). "100 Books - and Not a Hippie in Them." ''The New York Times'', p.&nbsp;52. Accessed through ProQuest Historical Newspapers on 22 May 2009.
* {{cite book |title=The Nancy Drew Scrapbook: 60 years of America's favorite teenage sleuth |last=Plunkett-Powell |first=Karen |year=1993 |publisher=St. Martin's Press |isbn=0-312-09881-2 |ref=Plunkett-Powell}}
* {{cite book |title=Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her |last=Rehak |first=Melanie |year=2006 |publisher=Harvest |isbn=0-15-603056-X |ref=Rehak}}
* {{cite book |title="Children's Series Books and the Rhetoric of Guidance: A Historical Overview" in Rediscovering Nancy Drew |last=Romalov |first=Nancy Tillman |editor1-last=Dyer |editor1-first=Carolyn Stewart |editor2-last=Romalov |editor2-first=Nancy Tillman |year=1995 |publisher=University of Iowa Press |isbn=0-87745-501-5 }}
* {{cite journal
  | last = Ross
  | first = Catherine
  | title = Reading the Covers Off Nancy Drew: What Readers Say About Series Books
  | journal = Emergency Librarian
  | volume = 24
  | issue = 5
  | date = May 1997
  }}
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==External links==
{{wikisource portal|Stratemeyer Syndicate}}
{{Commons category}}
{{Portal|Children's literature}}
* [http://stratemeyer.org  Edward Stratemeyer & the Stratemeyer Syndicate] – (c)2000 by James D. Keeline
* {{LCAuth|n78094656|Stratemeyer Syndicate|4|}}
* {{FadedPage |id=Stratemeyer, Edward|name=the Stratemeyer Syndicate|author=yes}}
* [https://librivox.org/keywords/10823 Works by the Stratemeyer Syndicate] at [[LibriVox]] (public domain audiobooks)

=== Project Gutenberg ebooks online ===
* [https://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/s#a1626 Edward Stratemeyer]
<!--pseud-->[http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/a#a267 Victor Appleton]; 
<!--pseudo-->[https://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/b#a3820 Richard Barnum];
<!--real (pseud of Gerald H. Breitgam)-->[https://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/b#a5443 Gerald Breckenridge];
<!--pseudo-->[https://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/c#a4161 Nicholas Carter];
<!--pseudo-->[https://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/c#a32638 Lester Chadwick];
<!--pseudo-->[http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/c#a2575 Allen Chapman];
<!--pseudo-->[http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/e#a1619 Alice B. Emerson]; 
<!--real-->[https://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/g#a808 Howard Roger Garis];
<!--pseudo-->[https://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/h#a1751 Mabel C. Hawley];
<!--pseudo-->[http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/h#a367 Laura Lee Hope]; 
<!--pseudo-->[https://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/m#a2659 Gertrude W. Morrison];
<!--pseudo-->[https://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/p#a1022 Margaret Penrose];
<!--pseudo-->[https://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/r#a1970 Homer Randall];
<!--pseudo-->[http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/r#a1625 Roy Rockwood];
<!--pseudo-->[http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/w#a1955 Frank V. Webster];
<!--pseudo-->[http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/s#a1626 Arthur M. Winfield];
<!--real-->[https://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/w#a37000 Mildred A. Wirt (Benson)];
<!--pseudo-->[http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/y#a1632 Clarence Young]
<br>Not found 2023 as Gutenberg authors: Franklin W. Dixon; Carolyn Keene; Eugene Martin<!--three pseudonyms-->

=== Archival collections ===
* [http://nwda-db.wsulibs.wsu.edu/findaid/ark:/80444/xv83120 Stratemeyer Syndicate records at U. of Oregon (guide)] at ArchivesWest
* [http://archives.nypl.org/mss/2903 Stratemeyer Syndicate records (guide)] at [[New York Public Library]] 
* [https://archives.yale.edu/repositories/11/resources/530 Stratemeyer Syndicate records (guide)] at Archives at Yale 

{{Nancy Drew}}
{{Hardy Boys}}

{{Authority control}}

[[Category:Stratemeyer Syndicate| ]]
[[Category:Book packagers]]