The Stratemeyer Syndicate was a publishing company that produced a number of mystery bookseries for children, including Nancy Drew , the Hardy Boys , the various Tom Swift series,the Bobbsey Twins, the Rover Boys , and others. They published and contracted the manypseudonymous authors doing the writing of the series from 1899 through 1987, when thesyndicate partners sold the company to Mega-Books.

"How many do you have now?" Said Robert.

"Four thousand two hundred and seventy three" said Sherwood.

"Wow." said Robert. "All children's series books?"

"All Stratemeyer books and all published before World War II. You have to set some boundariesas a book collector."

"I had no idea he published that many titles," said Robert.

"I'd read it was several hundred, butfour thousand?"

"They're not all unique titles," said Sherwood. "I started out trying to find one copy of each title,then upgraded to getting each title in a dust jacket, then each in a first edition, and then I startedin on later printings, changes in the dust jacket designs and so on. It's a funny thing about bookcollecting - no matter how tightly you define your collection, it keeps expanding."

Lovett, Charlie - Escaping Dreamland, Blackstone Publishing, Ashland, OR 2020 KindleEdition, Chapter XVII (57% in) Kindle Edition is $8.69

Escaping Dreamland just came out Sept. 22,2020. It is a lovely whimsical novel about theworld of publishing children's mysteries justbefore WWI and one writer's journey of researchand discovery into one legendary series. Thenovel is about what happened in Manhattanchildren's book publishing between 1895 and1915 and another writer's 2010 quest into thatworld to find answers to his own contemporarywriting issues. For a bibliophile New Yorker itwas especially great fun. Most of the librarieswere old friends. All wrapped up in an intelligentdust jacket of publishing scholarship.

The Hardy Boys by Franklin W. Dixon was astaple of my youth. I had no idea it was writtenby umpteen different writers. Just like a TVseries.

For more information, see:
Escaping Dreamland(https://charlielovett.com/books/escaping-dreamland/)