It seems ironic that America's most prolific creator of juvenile popular fiction is a man whose name is hardly known. Edward Stratemeyer revolutionized the world of children's writing by adapting it to the methods of mass production. His Stratemeyer Syndicate, founded at the turn of the twentieth century, hired ghostwriters to develop hundreds of stories based on Stratemeyer's outlines. From this "fiction factory," as some have called it, came such durable American heroes as the Bobbsey Twins, Tom Swift, the Hardy Boys, and Nancy Drew.

Edward L. Stratemeyer

Born in New Jersey in 1862, the son of German immigrants, Stratemeyer grew up admiring the rags-to-riches stories of Horatio Alger and aspired to write similar books. The progress of Edward Stratemeyer's career is reminiscent of an Alger plot as well. Although he did not quite start in rags, Stratemeyer eventually obtained riches by steadily climbing the...