Story #1, Continued.

Stratemeyer Syndicate released the first three books at the same time, on April 28th, 1930 as a breeder set, and they became an overnight success as thousands of American girls found Nancy’s bold and plucky nature to their liking.

Stratemeyer hired Mildred Augustine Wirt Benson to write the first Drew’s. She would go on to write 23 of the first 30 books, including the first seven that are the cornerstone of any serious Nancy Drew collection. But that was hardly all Mildred wrote. In total, this shy little woman who passed herself off as “just a courthouse reporter” for the Toledo Blade for nearly four decades was also the author of many Hardy Boys, Bobsey Twins, Tom Swift and literally hundreds of other popular novels between 1930 and 1969. She wrote under several names, male and female and is a story in her own right, including the first woman to graduate from the School of Journalism, University of Iowa and had her first novel published while still in school. You can learn more through the links below.

Stratemeyer’s authors were not always female, either. After Mildred started her own one-woman ghost writer’s strike when Stratemeyer cut her pay during the depression, he pulled one Mr. Walter Karig off of other ghosted assignments and told him to write issues eight, nine and ten.

Karig was over-the-top with the popular assignment and fame and glory finally got the better of him. He broke ranks and went public with his authorship in the mid-30’s hoping for the same success the series had known. But the Statemeyer sisters were furious and vowed Karig would never see another word in print. Old Walter was a WW-I correspondent though, and he knew his way around the editor’s office. He went on to a successful if not exactly Nancy-Drew-stellar career in both fiction and nonfiction, but the days of the ghost writer were clearly numbered.

Today, Nancy is still in syndication with over 175 solved mysteries to her credit. The first 30 volumes are the hardest to find, especially in dust jackets and remain, by far, the most collectable. Of special interest to collectors is the fact that Grosset and Dunlap - best known for their reprints of popular boy’s and girl’s novels and as such taboo from any serious shelf - are indeed the original publishers for the first 56 Nancy Drew novels. G & D published Nancy Drew from 1930 until its “sale” to Simon & Schuster in 1979, a sale that was quickly followed by a highly publicized law suit and subsequent testimony as to true authorship and ownership to the first 56 novels. It was from the witness stand and from the author’s own mouth that the world learned under oath in 1980 - some 50 years after the first novels were released, that Mildred Augustine Wirt Benson was, indeed, Nancy Drew. She has never been out-of-print since.

Much thanks to www.nancydrewsleuth.com/history.html and www.lib.uiowa.edu/spec-coll/Bai/lapin.htm for their wonderful accounts of this Lady.

Story #2, Continued.

In today’s modern western, the gun is simply understood as part of the wardrobe for certain character-types… cops, robbers, detectives and gangster all would be more conspicuous without their “piece.”. We expect to see hip holsters on detectives, rifles on the range and a Glock in the gloved hand of the assassin. Fictional and factual story alike, the gun has been shooting up a good western for hundreds of years!

The gun commands Stage West. From double-barrel derringers to six-shooters, from long rifles to rapid-fire Gatling guns, every main character who crossed the Mississippi was packin’ heat. There are many masterful tales of how the gun kept our hero alive, regardless of size or stature. It was the great equalizer long before the emancipation proclamation. It gave courage to cowards and it prevented both evil and good men from busting down your door in tale after tale.
 
But the gun wasn’t always used to settle personal scores. Guns also kept big cats in the mountains and shooed buffalo from the pastures, to the point of near extinction, for the sake of trophy and survival, exquisitely told in chapter and verse. Natives were cleared from their land, herded onto reservations because the point of the gun was the only law. Territories were claimed and reclaimed, stagecoaches were robbed and protected, and cattle herded and rustled at the guidance or grievance of the gun. So told to us in this, perhaps the most diverse of all genres; The Western.

The other common thread woven through most every western classic is the fact that men had their fingers on the trigger. There are some well know exceptions, but for every Anne Oakley, every Elizabeth Custer or Bonnie, there are a hundred stories about Wild Bill, a thousand about General Custer and ten thousand more about the male gangsters that robbed their way west. The early hand guns were heavy, kicked like a mule and settled all matters without further discussion – none of which was very ladylike. Nary a thought was given to the fairer sex until 1825. Until then, ladies of the west were totally dependant on men for their defense. But Henry Deringer changed all that when he produced his first small pistol. He didn’t set out to build a lady’s handgun; it was just an unintended consequence, but it became the first gun that a respectable lady might own without feeling intimidated. No, Henry set out to build a small pistol for gamblers to hide in their vests, not for ladies to hide in their corsets. The gun became so popular among both sets of customers that Colt and Remington started manufacturing versions of what they called “The Derringer,” misspelling Henry’s good name with a double r and thus avoided legal problems. The small pistol remained popular and respectable until one night in April, 1865, when John Wilkes Booth used his to settle a grievance with America’s 16th President. Popularity for the small gun fell dramatically after that.

Civilized man quickly followed the gun west and just as quickly wrote laws and rules to keep guns out of sight, out of mind, and hopefully out of the hands of bad people. But that policy was destined to fail from the start. Guns, like money, don’t care who owes it. Guns went underground and became a black market staple and still wound up in the hands of those who broke the law. Today, no respectable gang member would be caught dead without his gun and Americans are still just as fascinated by the stories; just read today’s paper, watch tonight’s news. What’s the lead story? Where’s the gun? We entertain ourselves with guns in more than just books, movies and television. We glorify the gun in song and video, capture it in paint and bronze, and as a nation, we devote several holidays to the gun’s ability to do our talking. The gun has sung some of our best songs, strung some of our best verses. The Western has always been about land you could stake a claim on, ride herd over, plant a crop and dig down a well, build a campfire and tell a good tale, if you had a gun.

Story #3, Continued.

Just a Normal Bean

But for a twist of fate, a doctor’s diagnosis back in 1898, Edgar Rice Burroughs, author of the immensely popular - and today, very collectable - “Tarzan” Series might have gone on to great fame and glory in an entirely different career: the military. 

Born into a family of entrepreneurs, “Ed,” as he was known in his youth, was the 5th Son of a retired Civil War Major. Ed was honed for a military career from his earliest education at Harvard (prep) School, and although gifted intellectually, Ed was basically lazy by all accounts. His teachers thought of him as only an average student even as they gave him good grades and high marks in their letters back home to his parents. He was expelled from the prestigious Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts for lack of effort, and he went A.W.O.L. from the Michigan Military Academy, twice, complaining both times of harsh conditions, only to be sent back both times by his father. He applied to West Point in 1896 but failed to get an appointment. 

Instead of going on to an illustrious career as the daring and astute officer that his father and brothers had envisioned, Ed suddenly found himself a lowly Private. Seeking adventure, he volunteered for the U.S. 7th Cavalry under the premise that he would be fighting Apaches. What he found in Arizona instead was hard work digging ditches under the hot sun during the day and pulling guard duty under the frigid moon at night. Again, he complained to his father – and this time to his mother as well – about the deplorable conditions and his failing health, he pleaded with them to buy his way out of the army – or help get him transferred to Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders (Roosevelt wrote back declining his generous offer). By now, the Old Major had heard enough complaining by his lazy son and now by his wife. Convinced Ed would never amount to much of a soldier, he gave in and wrote the Secretary of War stating all sorts of reasons why his son should be discharged from the army. Among them, the fact that Edgar had been underage when he joined. He also stated that his son had a “weak heart” for the military. The Army may have taken the Old Major too literally as the official records give the reason for his honorable discharge as medical, specifically, “Tobacco heart.” Today, it’s called arrhythmia, or heart murmur, and it is arguable this wasn’t anything more than an excuse back then to discharge an uncooperative soldier without disgracing his honorable father. 

Discharged by the army, passed over by his father, Ed spent the next 16 years opening and failing in a series of businesses funded by his father, older brothers, and/or business partners. Between these lost business dealings, Ed worked as a farmhand for Brother Coleman’s cattle ranch in Idaho, twice, for his father’s acid distillery in Chicago, at least twice. He was lured to Brother George’s gold dredging operation at Stanley Basin, Idaho, and then to Brother Harry’s gold mine on the Snake River in Perma, but failed strike it rich either time. He even rousting hobos and drunks off of freight trains as a railroad cop in Salt Lake City, Utah. All of which was fertile education for a career not yet realized.  

By 1910, Ed Burroughs was content buying ads and selling office supplies during the day and coming home in the evening to his wife and two children, over whom he doted. He challenged little in life, the less he was likely to be disappointed, again. Most of his unpublished writing from this time was in the form of poems and children’s stories that he wrote, drew and hand-crafted to his own daughter, Joan, and son, Herbert, and his nephews and nieces. 

Ed’s lackadaisical lifestyle left him ample time for escapism and he was easily drawn into the science fiction stories within the “dime pulps” he was supposed to be reading for advertising quality. It left a lot of time open for his creative side, and he would spend hours on end daydreaming and writing down fantastic tales that embodied the intrinsic teachings of his boyhood upbringing; heroism, valor, war, epic battles with futuristic weaponry – and voluptuous heroines in need of rescue! All the virtues his father and family had envisioned for him were coming to life on the pages under Ed’s pen in ways his father never could have dreamed of!  

July, 1911, was at the same time the lowest point and the highest point in the 35-year-old’s life. After living from paycheck to paycheck and only envying the great sums of money his favorite authors were being paid for what were in his opinion, “such poorly written,” stories, he was confident he could do better. Within the month, Ed lost his pencil sharpener business, took temporary employment with his brother’s failing stationary business and started writing what would eventually become “A Princess of Mars.” Barely able to feed his family and seemingly at the end of his rope, ERB is quoted in his biography, “If people were paid for writing rot such as I read in some of those magazines that I could write stories just as rotten. As a matter of fact, although I had never written a story, I knew absolutely that I could write stories just as entertaining and probably a whole lot more..." 

One month later he submitted the first 12 chapters of his unfinished science fiction tale to All Story Magazine. The premise of his story didn’t wander far from his own family’s experiences, if only seen through the prism of fiction. The submitted version was about an American Civil War hero, who is mysteriously transported from the deserts of Arizona to the deserts of Mars, where he possessed superman-like strength and god-like status among the local Tharks and Red Martians. He titled this version, “Under the Moons of Mars” and submitted it to All Story on August 14th. But deep-down he still lacked self confidence. He was afraid the editors would think this author must be completely crazy to come up with such Martian nonsense, so to preserve his family name, he used a pseudonym; the same pen name he would use one month later on the bottom of a baseball poem published by the Chicago Tribune. Looking back from this historical perspective, he had nothing to fear, of course. All-Story Editor Thomas Newell Metcalf loved it and agreed to buy it. He ran it as a six-part series in the February to July issues the following year, and gave the author as, “Norman Bean.”

In fact, Edgar Burroughs submitted his first story under the name “Normal Bean” as a way of telling the editors that he really was in his right mind. “Just a normal bean,” was a popular expression back then to describe someone who was, if not brilliant, at least not a nitwit. But the little joke backfired when either Metcalf or his typesetter caught – and changed – what they thought was a typesetter’s error in January’s promotion for the upcoming issue. That piece did say Normal was the novice author’s first name, so technically, “Normal” Bean is the correct, correct answer, but like everything in this man’s life, not exactly... 

Edgar Rice Burroughs also wrote under the name John Tyler McCulloch on three occasions. One of those pieces – “Beware!” – was published by his fan club in 1922, so he did, in fact, have another pseudonym. This story was published a second time in the July, 1939 issue of Fantastic Adventures (Ray Palmer, Editor) only re-titled as “Scientists Revolt” and this time under his real name. It enjoyed a third publishing when it was reprinted in the winter, 1998 issue of Burroughs Bulletin. Apparently, he chose John Tyler McCulloch as an amalgamation of family names given to his father, uncle and two of his brothers, including Arthur McCulloch Burroughs, who was born and died at age 12-days in 1874; a year before his own birth. Perhaps more than anything else, this shows how deeply family roots ran throughout all of Burroughs’ writings.

Metcalf paid “Norman Bean” $400 for “Under the Moons of Mars,” an enormous sum for a novice author at that time, and Ed’s esteem was restored. Although he would face many more rejections in his early writing career, he would never doubt himself again. He would never lose again in business, either. It would be another five years – 1917 – before A. C. McClurg would publish this story, bound as a single volume and re-titled, “A Princess of Mars” as the first of his now-famous Barsoom Series, coming fresh on the heels of his immensely popular Jungle Series. 

Today, a first edition of “A Princess of Mars” with all five of the F. E. Schoonover-illustrated plates inserted and with the orange enamel stamping intact, but without the rare dust jacket, will still fetch over $1,000 in the collector market. One with an original dust jacket could easily bring four or five times as much… And, an author-signed, first edition in a dust jacket – any Edgar Rice Burroughs-signed first edition in a dust jacket – is one of the most sought after editions for the modern bibliophilic. 

Edgar Rice Burroughs would go on to publish 83 more novels and short stories, including four that went to press after his death in 1950. In almost all of them are the common characteristics of a courageous, muscle-bound hero, a brown-eyed, long-legged damsel in distress, an unfathomable, heathenish villain, and chilling, otherworldly settings that hold little redeeming value.  Ironically, Edgar wrote scores of vivid war-torn scenes but he never experienced real combat – something he’d sought since boyhood – until after writing about it for 34 years. He finally got his chance at the end of WW-II, when, in his late 60’s, he was the oldest war correspondent for the United States Press Corp, Pacific Theatre. Oh, and that doctor back in 1898 who diagnosed him with a weak heart? Well, Ed’s heart finally did claim him – at the age of 75! ERB was anything but a Normal Bean!

Sources
ERBzine.com
Wikipedia.com, the internet’s free encyclopedia
George T. McWhorter, Curator, Burroughs Memorial Collection, University of Louisville Library
Fenton, Robert, Big Swingers: Biography of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Prentice-Hall, 1967.
Lupoff, Richard A., Edgar Rice Burroughs: Master of Adventure, Canaveral Press, 1965.

Story #4, Continued.

Frost’s Quarrel with the World

Robert Frost’s epitaph reads, “I had a lover’s quarrel with the world,” and according to Paul F. Kisak’s 2002 Unique Perspective on the poet laureate, this epitaph was first penned in 1942 as a verse in the poem, “The Lesson for Today.” The entire verse reads: “And were an epitaph to be my story I'd have a short one ready for my own. I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover's quarrel with the world.” It was also used in the title of the 1963 documentary about his life. When Frost was interviewed for this Academy Award-winning film by Shirley Clarke, a film in which he played himself, Frost admitted that he thought about changing it. In the film, Frost says, "I thought of modifying that, and saying I had my lover's quarrels, plural, with the world, but I make that one sustained quarrel all my life . . . It's a long sustained quarrel." He is also well known for another famous quote in which he would seem to be just as confounding: "I never take my side in a quarrel." But that was Frost. His poetic genius was his ability to clearly see life’s contrasts. That, and to cleverly write them down so others could see too. He was known by his family as simply, “RF,” and more than any other American poet before him, RF brought out the darker side of daylight and the lighter side of night, as witnessed in “Come In:” But no, I was out for stars; I would not come in. I meant not even if asked; And I hadn't been.

And in his poem, “Nothing Gold Can Stay,” he compares morning’s first light and spring’s first leaves with how quickly they become old. The entire poem is only eight lines, and yet it evokes both brightness and sadness, both eternal hope and unavoidable despair. Frost was at his finest when comparing love to hate and life to death. “The Death Of The Hired Man” has been called a long poem, a narrative, a drama, and a dialogue. But when it was finally produced as a one-act play, there were only two characters on stage; the husband and wife, Warren and Mary. Between them, they fully develop Silas, the hired man, entirely in dialog. They give us the scoundrel’s loves, losses, and bad habits, and we know him well – but he is never on stage! It isn’t until the final line, the final spoken word that you realize Frost has made you see something that wasn’t there.

Though he is often thought of as being a New Englander, RF was actually born on the other side of America, in San Francisco, on March 26, 1874. His father died when he was 11, the first of many such tragic funerals he would attend in his life. Frost would bury his mother, his sister, four of his six children and his wife of 42 years before his own death on January 29, 1963, at the age of 88. He is thought of as being from Massachusetts, or perhaps New Hampshire or Vermont because so many of his poems are set in New England, and indeed he did own homes in each of those states. But the man who loved New England so much moved his family to Jolly Old England in 1912 where “A Boy’s Will” and “North of Boston” would become his first published works (David Nutt, London, 1913 & 1914). When he returned to America in 1915 it was to fulfill two life-long dreams; poetry, and to find "a farm in New England where I could live cheap and get Yankier and Yankier." Approaching age 50, when most people are thinking of settling down, he left his newly-purchased, Stone House, in Vermont to accept a fellowship at the University of Michigan (1921-22 and 1926). The Ann Arbor house he lived in during those semesters is still around, and can still be toured, alas in Dearborn, as it is now one of the exhibits at The Henry Ford and Greenfield Village. Frost also owned a house is South Miami, Florida, where, under doctor’s orders, he wintered out his final years. But in all his travels and times away, he managed to keep New England in his heart and on the page. Frost was a man who derived as much enjoyment from looking out onto a field full of harvest as he did a room full of students. He was elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and he was honored as “Consultant in Poetry” by the Library of Congress during his long career, but in all that time he never quit farming, or quarreling. 

Robert Frost didn’t win his first Pulitzer Prize for Poetry until age 50; "New Hampshire: A Poem with Notes and Grace Notes." He went on to win the Pulitzer for Poetry again in 1931 for "Collected Poems," in 1937 for "A Further Range," and a final time, at age 69, for "A Witness Tree." All published by Holt, all very collectable today. Frost was also a great teacher. He received 44 honorary degrees from universities and colleges around America and England and taught at several, lectured at others, yet he never finished either of the two colleges he attended as a student; Dartmouth, for less than one semester, and Harvard, for a two and a half years.  

At age 86, RF became the first poet to speak at a Presidential inauguration; Kennedy, 1961. The ceremonies were running late as the cold weather had been playing havoc all that morning. Frost’s voice was not strong, and his eyesight was failing, and gusty winds on January 20 combined with strong glare off of the newly fallen snow made it all but impossible for Frost to read his handwriting. He penned (or penciled?) a new lead-in, titled “Dedication” just for the President’s inauguration – something he said he would not do! He meant to read it before the poem “The Gift Outright,” which he and Kennedy had selected. With the ceremonies running long and mother nature working against him, Frost handed Jacqueline Kennedy the original, handwritten two-page Dedication and recited the 16-line poem from memory. The new First Lady framed Dedication and made it the first thing she hung in JFK’s Oval Office. But if JKF was a fan of RF, then RF was certainly a fan of JFK. For you see, The Gift Outright is about America gaining her independence, and the original version carried the last line as, “such as she was, such as she would become,” but the President-in-Waiting suggested that, “such as she will become,” would make a stronger ending. “It would make it more optimistic,” Kennedy argued. Frost, who didn’t take criticism well, simply replied, “I suppose so.” Of course, Frost recited his President’s preference, “such as she was, such as she will become,” and he had to have been quarreling with himself as he did so.

An interesting sidebar here for the rare and one-of collector. The framed poem Dedication that Jacquie O hung in the Oval Office went missing after JFK’s death. There is a typed copy of “Dedication” that resides in the Library of Congress. Presumably the same copy Interior Secretary Stewart Udall saw Frost practicing with the morning of the Inauguration, but Frost’s original handwritten notes were thought to be lost forever. But we now know that a Kennedy administration official had it all those years as a personal keepsake. Upon this official’s death, it was willed to the Kennedy Presidential Library where it arrived in the mail, unannounced, on April 18 - 2006! Frost the man may be gone but his influence lives on.

Like his poetry, his grave site is both simple and easy to find. It’s at the end of a dirt path behind the Old First Church, somewhere out there in Vermont. Yet Frost wasn’t a religious man.

• –

Thanks to: http://www.frostfriends.org/chronology.html http://www.geocities.com/echomoscow/robert_lee_frost2.html http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,826763-6,00.html, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Frost, http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/r/robert_frost.html, http://memory.loc.gov:8081/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/mcc:@field(DOCID+@lit(mcc/088, A Unique Perspective On The Life of Robert Frost, by Paul F. Kisak http://www.jfklibrary.org/JFK+Library+and+Museum/News+and+Press/Robert+Frosts+Original+Poem+for+JFKs+Inauguration+Finds+Way+to +Kennedy+Presidential+Library.htm Photo credits Tom Lichtman for Frost’s tombstone. And other sources.

===
 

Story #5, Continued.

David Cornwall

David Cornwall, aka, John le Carre, is best known for his British espionage