Friday, January 4, 2008
Series History
| The Hardy Boys is a creation of the Stratemeyer Syndicate, the creators of dozens of successful book series such as the Rover Boys, the Bobbsey Twins and Tom Swift, and later, Nancy Drew. Edward Stratemeyer conceived of the Hardy Boys in 1926 with the creation of plot outlines that would become the first volume of the series. Various ghostwriters were employed, under contract of secrecy, to pen the actual stories. The first author was Leslie McFarlane, whose writing defined the literary style of the series, as well as the personalities and nuances of its characters. McFarlane authored volumes 1–16 and 22–24. His 1976 autobiography, Ghost of the Hardy Boys, provides substantial background information on the series, as well as the Stratemeyer Syndicate as a whole. Substantial revisions to the first 38 titles began in 1959. Over the course of 15 years the series was revised to modernize outdated vernacular, reduce story length, age the characters and remove the ethnic and racial stereotypes prevalent in many of the early books (although the series was unusually inclusive for the era in having two non-WASP Hardy sidekicks who were portrayed as normal, fully assimilated teenagers—Tony Prito and Phil Cohen). The result of this process varied from one book to another. In some cases only minor changes resulted, while in others the entire plot and storyline were thrown out, resulting in an entirely new book bearing no resemblance to the original. In 1979, after 52 years and 58 titles (plus the didactic Hardy Boys' Detective Handbook), Grosset & Dunlap lost the rights to publish any new Hardy Boys tales in a protracted court battle with the Syndicate. They did retain the right to continue publishing these 58 titles and continue to do so to this day, despite several changes in ownership. In the meantime, Simon & Schuster continued the series in the Hardy Boys Digest series of paperback books. In 2005 the venerable Digest series was ended with volume 190 and a new series, The Hardy Boys: Undercover Brothers, was started. The Undercover Brothers series is supplemented by a series of graphic novels and, initially, a now-discontinued series of comic books. Also in 2005 Grosset & Dunlap gained permission to continue publishing more titles in hardcovers, starting with Digest volumes 59 to 66. The Hardy Boys also appeared in several spin-off series: The Casefiles (127 volumes), the Clues Brothers (17 volumes), with Tom Swift in the 2 volume Ultra-Thriller series and with Nancy Drew in the 36 volume Supermystery series & the 6 volume Be Your Own Detective series. Hardy Boys books have been issued in over 25 languages, including Norwegian, Spanish, Swedish, Dutch, French, German, Sinhala, Japanese, Russian, Malay, and Afrikaans. |
