Nancy Drew Book List

The Nancy Drew book list can at times seem a bit overwhelming. Nancy, despite her simple, wholesome values, has gone through a number of turbulent times at the publishing house. There has been an air of controversy from the very first book.

The Nancy Drew series was started in 1929 by Edward Stratemeyer. Mr. Stratemeyer, sensing there were not enough books for girls among the mysteries he published, hired journalist Mildred Wirt to write a series with a female protagonist. After seeing the first book, Stratemeyer had misgivings--he thought Nancy was a bit too saucy when dealing with her "superiors."

The Nancy Drew Book List Grows and Shrinks

The publishers, on the other hand, loved the book and loved Nancy, so much so that they had Ms. Wirt write as many of the books as she was able (twenty-three of the first thirty). Nancy Drew books numbered fifty-six when, in the 1980s, Simon & Schuster bought the rights to the series and started publishing books aimed at slightly older readers. While they produced more than one hundred books in "The Nancy Drew Files," many of them have since fallen out of print.

Luckily, the original fifty-six books are still going strong. Thanks to the creativity of Mildred Wirt and others, Nancy still shines in her series aimed at girls between the ages of eight and fourteen. The Nancy Drew book list is most relevant and easy to grasp when dealing simply with the first series of books.