Nancy Drew -- Eighty Years Young

Did you know that you can buy a facsimile of the original Nancy Drew, book 1? The Secret of the Old Clock is on sale at Amazon and tons of other places I am sure. But I don't need one. I still have my own copy from the fifties. I also have The Hidden Staircase and remember reading them over and over. She was daring, she had the freedom to do as she liked and, of course, she was rich.

Last night I went to a lecture which was taped for television re-broadcast. The topic was the
(R)Evolution of Nancy Drew. Yes, that really was the title--the point being that Miss Nancy has had a tremendous effect on American girlhood.

The lecturer was an enthusiastic young English prof named Michael Cornelius who got hooked on Nancy Drews from his mother's bookcase when he was a kid. He had on the coolest tie that someone had made for him from "Girl Sleuth" fabric. He's co-written a book about her and the other girl sleuths.

The wikipedia article has tons of info. I picked up a few additional tidbits from the lecture though. Her titian red hair wasn't always red. Seems that they misprinted a book cover and it was cheaper to change her hair color in the text than to change the cover art.  I learned that the man who dreamed up the series, Walter Stratemeyer, gave the ghostwriters an outline to work from. And that the outlines still exist as the family's archives are great. I also learned that some of the foreign translations don't go word for word but actually work from these same outlines. So the books are very different. According to this  young expert, Nancy has always been popular in countries where girls have a lot of freedom.

They allowed the audience to share memories and ask questions. Several women, teachers and librarians, told how they were discouraged from reading them and not allowed to use Nancy Drews for book reports when they were kids. Now teachers and librarians are thrilled if kids read anything! O tempora, o mores.