The Bobbsey Twins are the principal characters of what was, for 75 years, the Stratemeyer Syndicate 's longest-running series of American children's novels, written under the pseudonym Laura Lee Hope . The first of 72 books was published in 1904, the last in 1979, with a separate series of 30 books published from 1987 through 1992. The books related the adventures of the children of the upper-middle-class Bobbsey family, which included two sets of fraternal twins : Bert and Nan, who were eight years old, and Flossie and Freddie, who were four when the first book was written. The two sets of twins aged as the series went on. As the series continued, the two sets of twins were perpetually aged at 12 and 6.
36-408: Edward Stratemeyer is believed to be the writer of the first volume in its original form in 1904. When the original series was brought to its conclusion in 1979, it reached a total of 72 volumes. At least two attempts to restart the series were launched after this, but neither effort saw the popularity the original series achieved. Speculation that Stratemeyer also wrote the second and third volumes of
72-596: A Simon & Schuster partner, and James M. Jacobson bought Pocket Books for $ 5 million. Simon & Schuster acquired Pocket in 1966. Phyllis E. Grann who would later become the first woman CEO of a major publishing firm was promoted to run Pocket Books under then CEO Richard E. Snyder . Grann left for Putnam in 1976. In 1981, Dr. Benjamin Spock 's Baby and Child Care was listed as their top seller, having sold 28 million copies at that time and having been acquired in 1946. In 1989, The Dieter by Susan Sussman became
108-492: A direct sequel to the previous book, tying up some plot threads. The fourth book, The Bobbsey Twins at School , begins the next autumn, with Nan and Bert "nearly nine years old" and Freddie and Flossie "almost five." Editors at the Stratemeyer Syndicate quickly realized, at this rate, their young heroes would quickly age beyond their readership, so the later books in the series (and revised editions) take place in
144-862: A lively atmosphere growing up. Stratemeyer was a member of the Roseville Athletic Club and the New Jersey Historical Association. Stratemeyer died at age 67 in Newark, New Jersey on May 10, 1930, of lobar pneumonia and was buried in Evergreen Cemetery in Hillside, New Jersey . On May 12, 1930, two days after his death, the New York Times reported that his Rover Boys series "had sales exceeding 5,000,000 copies". Stratemeyer pioneered
180-419: A massive number of editors, copy writers , stenographers , cowriters and secretaries . They greatly contributed to a new genre of juvenile fiction and helped launch several series, including Edward Stratemeyer appears in the television series The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles . In the series, Stratemeyer is the father of the fictional Nancy Stratemeyer, who dates Indiana Jones in high school. Indiana
216-511: A ripple effect, because the original The Bobbsey Twins at Cloverbank was a sequel to the original Baby May. Thus, a second book, The Bobbsey Twins and the Four-Leaf Clover Mystery, was written. It incorporates little material from the original. Starting in 1987, a numbered series of paperback originals branded The New Bobbsey Twins were released by Minstrel Books, an imprint of Pocket Books . Featuring all-new stories,
252-534: A sort of chronological stasis , with the older twins perpetually 12 years old and the younger set 6. The earliest Bobbsey books were mainly episodic strings of adventures; with the growing popularity of the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew , detective plots began to dominate the series. Few of the mysteries involved violent crime, and quite a few did not involve any crime. While many of the early volumes were constructed from whole cloth, with little or no connection to
288-407: A tremendously popular series in the vein of the classic dime novel . The Rover Boys was described as "The first highly successful series by Edward Stratemeyer; each volume had a preface from Edward Stratemeyer himself, thanking his readers and touting the other books. It's generally accepted that Stratemeyer wrote all of the books." He said this series was his personal favorite. Stratemeyer formed
324-466: Is a fan of Tom Swift and gives Stratemeyer advice for one of his stories. Pocket Books Pocket Books is a division of Simon & Schuster that primarily publishes paperback books. Pocket Books produced the first mass-market , pocket-sized paperback books in the United States in early 1939 and revolutionized the publishing industry. The German Albatross Books had pioneered
360-420: Is regarded as the author of 60–67 and the rewrites of 14 and 18–20, and Nancy Axelrad is credited with 68–72. Of the 1960s rewrites not mentioned, volumes 5 and 16 are credited to Mary Donahoe, 6 and 25 to Patricia Doll, 8–10 and 15 to Bonnibel Weston, and 24 to Margery Howard. In the original editions, the first books in the series (like those in previous Stratemeyer series) took place in a clear chronology, with
396-434: The book-packaging technique of producing a consistent, long-running series of books using a team of freelance writers. All of the books in the series used the same characters in similar situations. All of the freelance writers, including Mildred Benson , who developed the character of Nancy Drew, were published under a pen name owned by his company. Through his Stratemeyer Syndicate , founded in 1906, Stratemeyer employed
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#1732790147965432-489: The 1950s (for earlier versions, a single common dust-jacket painting was used throughout an edition), but most were new with the "purple" edition. In all, twenty were completely rewritten, all but two with modernized titles, while sixteen were never released in this edition, evidently deemed to be dated beyond repair. Most of the rewrites were motivated by changing technology (automobiles replacing horses and buggies) or changing social standards, particularly in how Sam and Dinah,
468-478: The American market. Priced at 25 cents and featuring the logo of Gertrude the kangaroo (named after the mother-in-law of the artist, Frank Lieberman), Pocket Books' editorial policy of reprints of light literature, popular non-fiction, and mysteries was coordinated with its strategy of selling books outside the traditional distribution channels. The small format size, 4.25" by 6.5" (10.8 cm by 16.5 cm) and
504-507: The Bobbsey twins appear in The CW drama Nancy Drew , an adaptation of another Stratemeyer Syndicate series. In the series, the twins are given the full names of Amanda and Gilbert "Gil" and are respectively played by Aadila Dosani and Praneet Akilla. Edward Stratemeyer Edward L. Stratemeyer ( / ˈ s t r æ t ə ˌ m aɪ ər / ; October 4, 1862 – May 10, 1930)
540-407: The Stratemeyer Syndicate in 1905 and hired journalists to write stories based on his ideas. He paid them a flat rate for each book and kept the copyrights to the novels. Stratemeyer married Magdalena Van Camp, the daughter of a Newark businessman, on March 25, 1891. The couple had two daughters: Harriet Stratemeyer Adams (1892–1982) and Edna C. Squier (1895–1974), both of whom would later take over
576-454: The age of 26, he sold his first story, Victor Horton's Idea , to the children's magazine Golden Days for $ 76, over six times the average 1888 weekly paycheck. Stratemeyer moved to Newark, New Jersey, in 1890 and opened a paper store. He ran his shop while continuing to write stories under pseudonyms. He was able to write for many genres including detective dime novels, westerns and serials that ran in newspapers. In 1893, Stratemeyer hired
612-457: The bestseller list, and by the end of the first week sold out of its initial 100,000 copy run. By the end of the year Pocket Books had sold more than 1.5 million units. Robert de Graff continued to refine his selections with movie tie-ins and greater emphasis on mystery novels, particularly those of Christie and Erle Stanley Gardner . Pocket and its imitators thrived during World War II because material shortages worked to their advantage. During
648-486: The black cook and handyman, were portrayed. The Bobbsey Twins and Baby May received the most extreme rewrite; it is a story about the Bobbsey family's adventures searching for the parents of a foundling baby. Since, by the 1960s, sheer numbers of government agencies rendered the original story utterly implausible, an entirely new novel was written about the twins' adventures with a baseball-playing baby elephant ( The Bobbsey Twins' Adventures with Baby May ). This, however, had
684-589: The characters aging as time passed. The Bobbsey Twins: Merry Days Indoors and Out took place over the course of a school year, with Nan and Bert described as eight years old and Freddie and Flossie four. The second book, The Bobbsey Twins in the Country is set at the beginning of the following summer. The second part of the summer is chronicled in The Bobbsey Twins at the Seashore , which is written as
720-543: The fact that the books were glued rather than stitched, were cost-cutting innovations. The first ten numbered Pocket Book titles published in May 1939 with a print run of about 10,000 copies each: This list includes seven novels, the most recent being six years old ( Lost Horizons , 1933), two classics (Shakespeare and Wuthering Heights , both out of copyright), one mystery novel, one book of poetry ( Enough Rope ), and one self-help book. The edition of Wuthering Heights hit
756-613: The first hardcover published by Pocket Books. Pocket was for many years known for publishing works of popular fiction based on movies or TV series, such as the Star Trek franchise (owned by former corporate siblings CBS Television Studios and Paramount Pictures ). Since first obtaining the Star Trek license from Bantam Books in 1979 (with a publication of the novelization of Star Trek: The Motion Picture ), Pocket has published hundreds of original and adapted works based upon
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#1732790147965792-723: The franchise and continues to publish a new novel every month. Beginning in 2017 with novels based on Star Trek: Discovery , the Star Trek novel lines have gradually moved to Simon & Schuster's Gallery Books line. Pocket also previously published novels based on Buffy the Vampire Slayer . The author credited for one of the Buffy products is Gertrude Pocket, a reference to the company's kangaroo logo. (The Buffy novels are now published by Simon Spotlight Entertainment , another division of Simon & Schuster .) Pocket Books
828-597: The future Stratemeyer Syndicate . Stratemeyer enjoyed the outdoors and often took annual summer trips to the Great Lakes , Lake George and Lake Champlain with his family. They traveled as far as the west coast and Yosemite . A humble man, he never sought public attention and preferred living a private and quiet life with his family at their home on N. 7th Street in the Roseville section of Newark. His relationships with his daughters were warm and Harriet recalled
864-401: The hardworking young American, which greatly influenced him. As a teenager, Stratemeyer operated his own printing press in the basement of his father's tobacco shop, distributing flyers and pamphlets among his friends and family. These included stories called The Newsboy's Adventure and The Tale of a Lumberman . After he graduated from high school, he went to work in his father's store. At
900-603: The idea of a line of color-coded paperback editions in 1931 under Kurt Enoch , and Penguin Books in Britain had refined the idea in 1935 and had one million books in print by the following year. Pocket Books was founded by Richard L. Simon , M. Lincoln ("Max") Schuster and Leon Shimkin , partners of Simon & Schuster, along with Robert Fair de Graff . Penguin's success inspired entrepreneur Robert F. de Graff, who partnered with publishers Simon & Schuster to bring it to
936-472: The names of well-known hotels and restaurants (and, in that particular case, the color of Colonial Williamsburg shuttle buses). It is said vol. 68, The Bobbsey Twins on the Sun-Moon Cruise, was the result of a research trip for a proposed Nancy Drew book: Harriet Stratemeyer Adams and Nancy Axelrad (her personal assistant at the time) took an eclipse cruise but, when they returned, the publisher
972-648: The opposite sex", but arguing the distinction between boy-twin and girl-twin "makes a world of difference": Bert "acts out his manhood by winning contests and beating the town bully, Danny Rugg", while his twin Nan – throughout the series "too old for dolls and pranks, too young for boys and barred from their games" – spends most of her time in the books "wagging her finger at Freddie and appearing to enjoy it", acting as "mini-parent, non-child, serious-minded little manipulator". From Weinstein's Bobbsey Twins Bibliography (list last revised September 18, 1999) Re-imagined versions of
1008-541: The popular dime-novel writer Gilbert Patten , according to Patten's own autobiography, Frank Merriwell's 'Father': An Autobiography by Gilbert Patten (Burt L. Standish) (University of Oklahoma Press, 1964). Patten writes that he did not like Stratemeyer. (A less-reliable source says that Stratemeyer was hired by Patten to write as an editor for the Street & Smith publication Good News . ) In 1894, he published his first full-length book, Richard Dare's Venture , which
1044-607: The real world, by 1917 ( The Bobbsey Twins in a Great City, vol. 9, rewritten in 1960 as The Bobbsey Twins' Search in the Great City ) they visit real places, and by the 1950s ( The Bobbsey Twins at Pilgrim Rock vol. 50), those visits to real places were as well-researched as any fictional visits to real places. By 1971, when the Bobbseys visited Colonial Williamsburg ( The Bobbsey Twins' Red White and Blue Mystery, vol. 64), real places were depicted in meticulous detail, down to
1080-594: The series ended with volume 30, The Mystery of the Mixed-Up Mall , in 1992. In her book The Rhetoric of Character in Children's Literature , Maria Nikolajeva refers to the twins as a "simple duplication of protagonists". Bobbie Ann Mason , in The Girl Sleuth: A Feminist Guide , differs, agreeing the books afford the child-reader an opportunity to imagine "a union with someone just like her, but of
1116-476: The series is believed to be incorrect; these books are attributed to Lilian Garis , wife of Howard Garis , credited with volumes 4–28 and 41. Elizabeth Ward is credited with volumes 29–35, while Harriet Stratemeyer Adams is credited with 36–38, 39 (with Camilla McClave), 40, 42, 43 (with Andrew Svenson ), and 44–48. Volumes 49–52 are attributed to Andrew Svenson , while 53–59, and the 1960s rewrites of 1–4, 7, 11–13, and 17, are attributed to June Dunn. Grace Grote
Bobbsey Twins - Misplaced Pages Continue
1152-513: The war, Pocket sued Avon Books for copyright infringement: among other issues, a New York state court found Pocket did not have an exclusive right to the pocket-sized format (both Pocket and Avon published paperback editions of Leslie Charteris ' The Saint mystery series, among others). In 1944, the founding owners sold the company to Marshall Field III , owner of the Chicago Sun newspaper. Following Field's death in 1957, Leon Shimkin,
1188-643: Was an American publisher, writer of children's fiction and founder of the Stratemeyer Syndicate . He was one of the most prolific writers in the world, penning over 1,300 books and selling more than 500 million copies. Stratemeyer created many well-known children's fiction book series , including The Rover Boys , The Bobbsey Twins , Tom Swift , The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew , many of which sold millions of copies and remain in publication. On his legacy, Fortune wrote: "As oil had its Rockefeller , literature had its Stratemeyer." Stratemeyer
1224-516: Was born the youngest of six children in Elizabeth, New Jersey , to Henry Julius Stratemeyer, a tobacconist , and Anna Siegel. They were both from Hanover, Germany , immigrating to the United States in 1837. The siblings were educated in English and spoke it to each other. Growing up, Stratemeyer read the works of Horatio Alger and William T. Adams , writers who penned rags-to-riches tales of
1260-485: Was more interested in a new Bobbsey title. In 1960, the Stratemeyer syndicate rewrote most of the older volumes, many of which became almost unrecognizable in the process. This was concurrent with the release of a new edition of the series, with picture covers, no dust jackets, and a lavender spine and back cover (replacing earlier various green bindings). Many of the cover paintings were dust-jacket paintings added in
1296-564: Was the first in his Bound to Succeed series. It contained autobiographical content and was similar to Alger's rags-to-riches story formula. In 1899, Horatio Alger wrote Stratemeyer as editor of the Good News , asking him to finish one of his manuscripts. Alger was in poor health at the time. When Alger died later the same year, Stratemeyer continued to edit and finish several of Alger's other books. That same year, after Alger died, Stratemeyer wrote and published The Rover Boys , which became
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