{"id":5408,"date":"2016-07-15T11:00:20","date_gmt":"2016-07-15T15:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/?p=5408"},"modified":"2016-08-31T15:54:40","modified_gmt":"2016-08-31T19:54:40","slug":"not-quite-pulp-juvenile-series-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/2016\/07\/15\/not-quite-pulp-juvenile-series-books\/","title":{"rendered":"Not quite pulp: juvenile series books"},"content":{"rendered":"
\""The<\/a>
“The Rover Boys in the Mountains”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

While the focus of this blog is pulp fiction, mainly hero pulps, I have and will continue to delve into areas around the “fringe” of pulp fiction.<\/p>\n

This includes the literary forerunners to pulp fiction in the U.S. and overseas, the successors of pulp fiction in paperback, digests, thrillers, and New Pulp<\/a>, and the adaption of pulp characters into other media such as comics, comic strips, radio, movies\/serials, and TV.<\/p>\n

An area I have been considering looking at are the various juvenile or children’s series books that somewhat paralleled pulps from the late 1800s until around the 1970s. In particular, I mean the various numbered series of books of teens in mysteries\/adventures, usually owned by the publisher and put out under a house name, similar to the hero pulps. (So, no, I won’t be looking at the more recent juvenile\/teen fiction series such as Harry Potter<\/strong>, Divergent, Maze Runner, etc.)<\/p>\n

One thing I’ve long had a problem with is the view that the hero pulps were aimed at the juvenile reader. Mainly because there were separate works, such as the series books that were explicitly aimed at the juvenile reader, with youthful protagonists. Later there were comics books that also was more aimed at them. The hero pulps always had adult heroes in adult situations, and seems more aimed at a little older reader.<\/p>\n

Before the advent of the pulps, there were the story papers and dime novels. Several serial characters appeared in these media. Some were clearly aimed at the juvenile reader, with boy inventor\/adventurers like Franke\u00a0Reade<\/strong> and Jack Wright\u00a0<\/strong>(which I’ve posted on before), or boy detectives or boy adventurers like the Boys of ’76 and so on. The dime novels also hosted more adult characters like Buffalo Bill<\/strong> and other western heroes, the various detective characters like Nick Carter<\/strong> and the like.<\/p>\n

With the replacement of the dime novels with the pulps, the adult series characters made the transition to the pulps, with various western and detective characters like Zorro<\/strong>, Nick Carter<\/strong>, and the like, and later the pulp heroes like The Shadow<\/strong>, Doc Savage<\/strong>, etc.<\/p>\n

But the juvenile series characters instead seem to move to series books in hardback, many coming from the Stratemeyer Syndicate which gave us the Rover Boys, Bobbsey Twins, Tom Swift<\/strong>, Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew<\/strong>, and many more.<\/p>\n

The Stratemeyer Syndicate was what we would call a book packager today, though they, not the publisher, owned the works. But they worked with the various printing houses of the time like Grosset & Dunlap, Cupples & Leon, Simon & Schuster, and the like. Edward Stratemeyer<\/strong> established the syndicate and originally wrote all the series under a variety of house names, then later got other writers to do the books using his outline and guidelines. The Syndicate kept themselves hidden from the general public. There would be no indication in any of the books they produced that it came from them.<\/p>\n

Some of the well-known series \u2014 they did a lot<\/em> of series \u2014 and the year they began:<\/p>\n

\""Tom<\/a>
“Tom Swift and His Triphibian Atomicar”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
    \n
  • Rover Boys, 1899, 30 volumes<\/li>\n
  • Bobbsey Twins, 1904, 72 volumes<\/li>\n
  • Tom Swift<\/strong>, 1910, 40 volumes<\/li>\n
  • Bomba, The Jungle Boy<\/strong>, 1926, 20 volumes<\/li>\n
  • Hardy Boys, 1927, 190 volumes<\/li>\n
  • Nancy Drew, 1930, 175 volumes<\/li>\n
  • Tom Swift Jr.<\/strong>, 1954, 33 volumes<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    In 1930, Edward’s daughters took over, especially Harriet Stratemeyer Adams<\/strong>, who took on writing or outlining series as well. In the ’50s they brought out new series and updated old ones like the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew. In the ’70s they grew frustrated with G&D and wanted to move to Simon & Shuster. \u00a0This lead to a big trial and shakeout with G&D. \u00a0Due to this, Grosset & Dunlap got to keep publishing the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew volumes they had been publishing (and still reprint today), and the Syndicate went with Simon & Schuster, who instead publish the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew Casebook series, plus new Tom Swift series, etc.<\/p>\n

    Harriet died in 1982, and her heirs sold off the Syndicate rights to Simon & Schuster in 1984, which is why all new works with these characters come from them.<\/p>\n

    But the Syndicate was not the only one doing these. Other publishers, including Grosset & Dunlap themselves, as well as Golden\/Whitman, Random House, Clover, etc, were producing various juvenile series such as Biff Brewster<\/strong>, Brains Benton<\/strong>, Rick Brant<\/strong>, and others.<\/p>\n

    In another connection with the pulps, some pulp authors also<\/em> wrote works in some of these series. Walter Gibson<\/strong>, creator of The Shadow, wrote several Biff Brewster volumes. Charles Spain Verral<\/strong>, longtime writer of Bill Barnes<\/strong>, created Brains Benton and wrote most of the series as well as other juvenile works. W. Ryerson Johnson<\/strong>, who wrote some Doc Savages and several other pulp works, had his own juvenile series, Bob Blake<\/strong>, which ran under his name.<\/p>\n

    So over the coming months I’ll do postings on those series that interest me. At present, that includes: Tom Swift, Rick Brant, Biff Brewster, Brains Benton, Bob Blake, Bomba the Jungle Boy, Christopher Cool<\/strong>, Danny Dunn<\/strong>, the Three Investigators, and Tom Quest<\/strong>. Sorry, no Hardy Boys, I never found them, nor the girls series, interesting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    While the focus of this blog is pulp fiction, mainly hero pulps, I have and will continue to delve into areas around the “fringe” of pulp fiction. This includes the literary forerunners to pulp fiction in the U.S. and overseas, the successors of pulp fiction in paperback, digests, thrillers, and New Pulp, and the adaption […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":5436,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_has_post_settings":[],"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"The Pulp Super-Fan looks at the juvenile series books. #pulpmags","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_wp_rev_ctl_limit":""},"categories":[141,1,14],"tags":[],"hashtags":[],"class_list":["post-5408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-juvenile-fiction","category-pulps","category-review"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/files\/2016\/08\/tom-swift-and-his-triphibian-atomicar.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3eLo8-1pe","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5408"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5408\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5728,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5408\/revisions\/5728"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5408"},{"taxonomy":"hashtags","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtags?post=5408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}