Launched in 2004, this website contains bibliographies and resources pertaining to the multiple incarnations of Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew mysteries, from the earliest Hardy Boys Mystery Stories of 1927 to the recent series Nancy Drew Diaries and Hardy Boys Adventures, as well as related series featuring the Bobbsey Twins, Tom Swift, and the Dana Girls. For almost a century, these franchises have continually been reinvented to keep up with popular trends in mass fiction for young people, including offshoots in the areas of film, television, and the graphic novel. Coupled with these bibliographies of primary texts are lists of secondary materials such as book-length studies, academic papers, and selected periodical articles, which are offered as a resource for scholars and readers of this popular culture phenomenon.
I would like to thank Deidre Johnson for her kind permission to excerpt material from her study, Stratemeyer Pseudonyms and Series Books: An Annotated Checklist of Stratemeyer and Stratemeyer Syndicate Publications (1982), for the following pages: The Bobbsey Twins I, The Bobbsey Twins II (till 1981), Tom Swift I, The New Tom Swift Jr. Adventures, and The Dana Girls Mystery Stories.
About the Site Owner
Benjamin Lefebvre teaches in the graduate certificate program in publishing at Ryerson University. He contributed the entries on “Hardy Boys Series,” “Nancy Drew,” and “Stratemeyer Syndicate” to The Oxford Encyclopedia of Children’s Literature, edited by Jack Zipes (Oxford University Press, 2006).