Most people who have known me forever know about my love for the Nancy Drew series. When I was seven, my mother gave me all her old books, and I read just about all of them (the exception being a few lacking their dust covers, and without the yellow spine; they tended to be separated, or looked too boring to me). Through elementary school, I was known as the Nancy Drew girl. As I got older (well, ok, so this may have been third or fourth grade) I got my paws on my sisters' copies of
The Nancy Drew Files, the eightiesified version of good old Nancy. Ned wasn't such a chauvinist in those, if I recall. And in the mid-nineties, the series
Nancy Drew on Campus was released, where the poor girl finally gets to go to college. That series was actually pretty good; I only had the first three, but Ned was back to being a chauvinist - and she dumped him. But I digress.
Here at home for the winter break, I noticed that my little sister has now taken possession of the old yellow Nancy Drews, though she's currently more fascinated with my old Goosebumps series. I decided to read one of out of boredom -
The Clue of the Tapping Heels. Well, there were racial slurs that I certainly didn't recall from when I was seven, or from the rest of the series for that matter. The copyright date said 1939, but still, I was rather shocked; this wasn't the Nancy Drew I recalled.
This evening I was browsing some and came across a site about the differences in the original and revised editions of
Mystery at Lilac Inn. It said the book had been revised, to take out racial slurs, to aid in pacing, etc, but it wasn't just edited - it was fairly rewritten. To my surprise, the memory I had of the novel matched with the revised edition, not the original.
But these were my mom's books! Just how old was the revision? I went to find the book in question. Naturally, it's gone missing. But as it was only the fourth in the series, I decided to look at the other early ones. I pulled out the very first Nancy Drew,
The Secret of the Old Clock. I knew that
Tapping Heels, circa 1939, was #16 or so. I looked at the copyright date of
Clock and found...
Copyright 1959
This new story for today's readers is based on the original of the same title.
Aha! I began rifling through all the books, checking dates. Looking up more on google is cleared things up fairly quickly. You see, the revising started in 59 - when my mom was still a kid, and went on through the sixties. So for a time, it was entirely possible to buy these books with the first few edited, but not the later ones. And any written after that time would have the same stylistic differences, etc. So we have the first six or so edited, but I've found at least six more (some of which were older editions and looked more "boring") that have copyright dates from the early thirties. I'm fascinated by these, and intend to read them; I've read of other differences in these, like that Carson Drew carried a cane and was stricter with Nancy, and that Nancy was sixteen instead of eighteen. These older books were not my favorites; the ones I best remember were either written in the sixties, or early ones revised during that period. Nancy drove a run-of-the-mill convertible in those, though, and I clearly remember Nancy driving the original roadster, so I guess I read quite a few of the older ones as well. I plan to begin reading them tonight. At any rate, it looks like I can wrap up this Mystery of the Rewritten Novel.
I also came across a website with wonderful Nancy Drew merch: pajamas, shirts, messenger bags, etc. And much of it is pink. I want I want I want! My "The World According to Nancy Drew" book still sits by my bed.
Off to read my 1932 mystery.
