Hardy Boys Books

Hardy Boys books, like their sister series of Nancy Drew books, were the creation of Edward Stratemeyer. Well, sort of. Mr. Stratemeyer came up with the characters of Frank and Joe Hardy, as well as the plots for each of the books in the original series, and then turned the actual writing over to professional writers (mostly journalists) who fleshed out his ideas.

The first Hardy Boys adventures were written by Leslie McFarlane, a journalist from Canada, under the pseudonym "Frank W. Dixon." In fact, all of the books in the original series are attributed to Frank W. Dixon, even though no one by that name wrote a single word of the books. The Hardy Boys series began in 1927 with three books: The Tower Treasure, The Secret of the Old Cliff, and The House on the Hill.

Hardy Boys Books Evolve

After fifty-eight volumes of the Hardy Boys had been published, Simon and Schuster obtained the rights to the series. In 1987, sixty years after the first Hardy Boys books appeared in print, the new publishers opened "The Hardy Boys Casefiles," a series aimed at older readers. While this series produced over one hundred books, they have not had the lasting impact of the original series.

In fact, many of the books from the "Casefiles" series are no longer printed. Yet the original series remains in publication, with only minor changes made to the earliest volumes. Another series, "Frank and Joe Hardy: The Clues Brothers," was scheduled to begin publication in 1997.