The Mystery of the Missing Past

I was recently introduced to a specific series of YouTube videos by someone on Twitter (my mind slipped on who, I apologize) that introduced me to this channel of a reader talking about the differences between the original editions of the Hardy Boys books and the latter reprints that began in the late 1950s, barely even three decades from the time the original books were published in the 1920s.

This is quite interesting, because of what the Hardy Boys actually were and what they became known as being are two radically different things. The original editions beginning to fall into the public domain is going to make those differences more well known because they will be the ones more readily available for the first time in nearly 100 years. Dover books, for instance, has already begun re-releasing the originals, and the differences are sometimes very jarring.

I've said before that the industry post-1940 is incredibly different than the one before it, and what they ended up doing to things like the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew might be the clearest example of this change. It would be like if publishers thought Treasure Island and Kidnapped! needed to be updated for modern standards to the point that the original intent is twisted and re-written for the suits in charge. Chances are, if you grew up with these books in the latter half of the 20th century, you never read the original versions of these books. In other words, you never actually read the original editions. And sometimes the originals are entirely different books.

It is strange that the anti-censorship crowd never brings this up, do they? It appears that censorship is only a problem if you do not contain "modern day sensibilities" in its pages.

To give you an example of what I mean, watch the video above. I can summarize the overall point, but I think the differences are more fascinating when they're outright spelled out for you. Essentially, if you read the 1950s re-writes and not the originals, you've never actually read the Hardy Boys. Amazing, isn't it?

The original Hardy Boys series began in 1926 and about 20 of the first 24 books (possibly 21 out of 26, it gets murky) were written by author Leslie McFarlane. He wrote the manuscripts while Edward Stratemeyer published and edited the original run of nine books and gave the general outline. After Stratemeyer died in 1930, his daughters Edna and Harriet were given control of his syndicate and gave the outlines to McFarlane instead.

Aside from a few books written by John Button in release cracks, the series appeared to be going well for over a decade. McFarlane's series was doing very well and making a good chunk of change, and even the syndicate did well by also putting out Nancy Drew not long after the Hardy Boys' initial success. Things went as they should.

All seemed to go business as usual, for a while. For a product of the 20th century it is amazing that it didn't rock the boat too hard. At least, on the surface, nothing appeared to change all that much. But things were bubbling under that wonderfully illustrated surface.

Then, like a lot of things in the literary world, things really seemed to change when the 1940s hit, a not too uncommon era in discussions around these parts. It was is if something was pumped into the drinking water back then.

But I digress. The Hardy Boys book series was not immune to the 20th century's god of progress and unending, and pointless, change. It held out for a good while, but Harriet Stratemeyer, someone who should have known better, would begin the process herself.

Taken from hardyboysonline.net

When it seemed to really shift was in 1942 when Edna married and left complete control to Harriet. Starting with The Flickering Torch Mystery (the eventual revised version of this is an entirely different book, it should be mentioned) she more or less seized control over all operations. Book 24, The Short-Wave Mystery from 1945 ended up being the last book McFarlane would write (again, it is contested if he wrote book 26), and the series would have  revolving door of writers (including Harriet herself) until the original run completed with 58 books in 1979.

Now, nothing is out of the ordinary with any of this. Plenty of series went on forever, long after the original creative team departed, so there is nothing too bizarre here. The 20th century, after all, did this all the time.

However, there is a big difference between how Perry Rhodan is being written now, and what happened to the Hardy Boys. You can still buy the original edition of Perry Rhodan--for nearly half a century you could not buy the original Hardy Boys books unless you lucked out on finding an original copy or a rare limited edition release from the early 1990s. You simply could not read the original versions.

You see, starting in 1959, after Book 38, The Mystery at Devil's Paw, released, Harriet went on a quest to re-write the original 38 books to bring them up to "modern" standards and bring them in line with the new brand and cut down hard on page count. This is why most people who talk about old Hardy Boys tend to specify "the original 38" over what came later. She essentially revised them all into a whole different series.

If you want to know a more detailed version of what changed, I suggest checking out the above channel because the proprietor of it has decided to read the original and revised versions and point out just what has been altered in the revising process. It's actually quite surprising how much has been tweaked, to the point that the Hardy Boys' squeaky clean image they became known for is the opposite of what they were originally intended to be.

Taken from hardyboysonline.net

You see, McFarlane wrote the Hardy Boys in the era of pulp. This meant close calls with danger, antagonistic authority figures, intense (but not explicit) language and prose, character-based comedy, and high adventure. The intent was to give kids the same sort of exciting stories their parents were reading in the pulps, just with characters more around their ages.

The revisions that began in 1959, in contrast, appeared to be designed to remove the male energy out of them, and turn the cast into bland cypher characters moving through outlined plots. Essentially, the plots were (sometimes) generally kept, but McFarlane's influence, and his contemporaries' as well, were stripped out and the shell left behind. It's a very strange process, but that's what was done, and seemed to be done specifically strip out the pulp influence that powered the series. It also changed the setting, euphemisms, and cultural landmarks to a vague "late 50s/early 60s milieu" that continued until the line's end. In other words, it turned into a brand. It was no longer about characters going through the stories.

It wasn't just the Hardy Boys, either. Nancy Drew began in 1930, and Mildred Wirt Benson wrote almost all of the original 30 books (Walter Karig wrote 3, a hodgepodge of others wrote 4) from 1930-1953. It continued on mostly under Harriet Stratemeyer's pen, but then in 1959, it also began the revision process that combed through the original 34 books to do the same thing they did to the Hardy Boys. The revisions stopped when they reached the bulk of books Harriet herself wrote, since she took over writing duties from Book 33, The Witch Tree Symbol, until the line's original end in 1979 with Book 56, The Thirteenth Pearl. In other words, the revisions more or less stopped the moment she took over the series. Like with the Hardy Boys, there is a good chance you've never read the original Nancy Drew, either. Mildred Wirt Benson's influence was scrubbed out of the series she basically built, much like Leslie McFarlane with the Hardy Boys.

Needless to say, when Nancy Drew goes public domain, just like the Hardy Boys has started to, it is those original versions that will become ubiquitous again, and that's definitely a good thing. This will be the first time in half a century that they will become more widely available than the revisions and therefore will replace them as the true versions in readers' eyes. As they should, because they are the true versions.

Let's be honest, by the time the public domain catches up to the revisions, it will be much too late for them to matter. Nobody is going to really be paying attention by the time that 38 Hardy Boys and 34 Nancy Drew books are easily accessible and widely available to readers. By that time, the originals will have reclaimed their position as the source material for the characters. 

At some point you have to ask: what is the purpose of the book you are writing? What is the intent of the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew? You can say it is to make money, and you wouldn't be entirely wrong, but it has to have a point beyond that. Is it about enforcing cultural values on the youth? What does it then say that the 20th century is the first time in history we have deliberately altered our books (not just in verbiage or contested translations, but outright purposeful revisionism) to erase who we were? What kind of future can you build if you cannot accept your past?

We are seeing the result of that sort of thinking all the time now. It leads to nothing but self-destruction and self-hatred. Unless you accept the past for what it is, you are doomed to live in its shadow, and we are seeing many such examples of such a thing today.

So what does all this mean? What exactly can we learn from this whole situation?

Mainly that revisionism is not as easy as scraping away the soul of someone else's work and replacing it with your own. Eventually the truth comes out and you can see just how everything truly is. As it is with the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew, and the same as it will be as more pulp era material becomes widely available again for all.

We might have missed out on a lot, but we always have ways of learning and adapting even when deceived. What is important is that we keep digging. There is plenty of buried treasure out there. All we have to do is never stopping searching for it.

That's all I've got this week! In case you didn't see the update on the Gemini Man Kickstarter, the last story is out at the editor and the cover for the omnibus has been commissioned. We're near the end, and I couldn't be more excited. It's been quite the year.

Also I have other news to announce, but I think I'll wait a bit longer. There's still quite a lot going on in the background.

Anyway, have a good weekend, and I'll see you next time!

A series of magic, superpowers, other worlds, crazy cultists, and strangeness beyond all reality itself! Check it out today, and leave a review!