She wasn’t real!

I have mentioned before how I have loved to read since I have been very young. I always had a book pretty much everywhere I went. I remember visiting with my parents when I was younger and sitting in the middle of a room with adults conversing about things I didn’t understand. Didn’t bother me a bit, for I just would lose myself in a book. Books were a constant friend of mine and they continue to be to this day. Just don’t have quite as much time as I had a child to read them!

I could never be a contestant on the Jeopardy show. I am nowhere close to being an expert on different kinds of trivia. My brain has way too many other things to remember! But now when it comes to books that is one category that I feel I can sometimes be pretty good about knowing different facts. I know the authors of well known books, well … at least I thought I did!

Tonight I learned that “Carolyn Keene” really doesn’t exist, the author of the Nancy Drew series that I read when I was young. Here I thought it was cool that the author was named “Carolyn”, but nope, the real person with the idea for the Nancy Drew mysteries wasn’t even a woman! It was Edward Stratemeyer.

I claim to know a lot about books, but yet I didn’t know this! I am ..smacking my head… for the 2nd time today.

Apparently he was the man behind a lot of other books as well.  He was also behind the series that I loved as a child, “The Bobbsey Twins”. That was another series where I remembered the author’s name all these years, “Laura Lee Hope”, but once again there really is no one with that name!

Yes, I know ghost writers have been around for a long time, but I just didn’t know it about these specific series. Plus this wasn’t just an author that used a different name. Both of these series were written by several different authors. Edward started them off, but then hired lots of different writers to continue with the series. He would write a 3 page outline about what he would like the book to be about and then he would hand it over. He would pay the writer between $50-$250 for each book, and he would collect all the royalties.

Perhaps this isn’t news to anyone, for I am used to being in the dark abut things, but I would like to think I enlightened someone. 🙂

Is there some new trivia fact that you have learned that you didn’t know before, feel free to share below!