Series Books-Edward Stratemeyer
"Write" Off the Assembly Line
Writer-entrepreneur Edward Stratemeyer was the singular mastermind behind an impressive array of American juvenile fiction series, generating a number of all-time best sellers. Between 1910 and 1930, his Stratemeyer Syndicate employed an army of ghostwriters, editors, and stenographers dedicated to turning out "slam-bang," 50-cent tales of the youthful adventures of the Rover Boys, Tom Swift, the Hardy Boys, the Bobbsey Twins, and Nancy Drew.
Stratemeyer amassed a fortune by marrying the fast-paced, character-driven storytelling of his mentor, Horatio Alger, Jr., with the assembly-line production techniques of his other lifelong hero, Henry Ford. (One Syndicate veteran referred to the exacting, formula-based writing process as "fitting the pipes.") High-minded librarians shunned the Syndicate's standard-issue chapter books as subliterary and "cheap," but a 1926 American Library Association survey of 36,000 young people told a different story: fully 98% of respondents placed a Stratemeyer title at the top of their list of all-time favorite books.
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