Happy Birthday, Nancy Drew!

My understanding is that today is Nancy Drew's 84th Birthday. She has been a friend of mine for quite a few years.  Nancy, Bess, George, kindly Hannah Gruen and Carson Drew all kept me and countless other young ladies company with wonderful mysteries that always ended well. Nancy and her entourage were the creation of Edward Stratemeyer--he had previously established the Hardy Boys mystery series. Given their success, he pursued a similar series for girls. Stratemeyer employed a series of "ghost writers" to develop the stories.  The first of these to write under the pseudonym Carolyn Keene was Mildred Wirt. 

 Within the original series, Nancy's look has changed quite a bit. I am no expert on Nancy, but I read that in 1959, the stories underwent revisions to make Nancy a little more modern. She became a bit more feminine and a little less assertive, but by no means did she change into a helpless wallflower. Another key feature of the revisions was the removal of "racial stereotypes." A few years ago, the original Nancy Drew stories were released, and they did seem a bit awkward to this reader. I grew up with the Nancy you see on the covers above.