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Before J.K. Rowling united boys and girls (and adults) with Harry Potter, there was quite a gender gap in literature. With very few exceptions, boys followed the Hardy Boys while girls read Nancy Drew. As popular as the two series were, you didn't need tremendous powers of deduction to figure out something was amiss. Sure they listed different authors -- Franklin W. Dixon for the Hardy Boys and Carolyn Keene for Nancy Drew -- but were the creators really one and the same? Having become quite adept at solving mysteries ourselves, we headed over to the Hardy Boys Unofficial Home Page in hopes of finding some clues. Sure enough, we quickly
learned that the man behind Frank and Joe Hardy was a chap named Edward Stratemeyer. Franklin W. Dixon never really existed -- he was just a pseudonym for a slew of ghost writers, though a man named Leslie McFarlane was the most prolific. He even came up with the name Franklin W. Dixon. Next, we investigated the boys' female counterpart at Nancy Drew Sleuth. Just as we suspected, Edward Stratemeyer was her creator as well. The site goes onto explain that while Stratemeyer may have come up with the concept, it was a woman named Mildred
A. Wirt Benson who wrote 23 of the first 30 books. She's generally credited with developing Nancy into such a likable and plucky character.
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