Nancy Drew Revisited: Female Private Eyes in Contemporary American Fiction

Created in the 1930s by the Stratemeyer Syndicate of writers, the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories are still very popular today both with teenage girls and American female detective writers. What are the reasons for the enduring appeal of the girl detective? Is Nancy Drew really, as some women writers ass...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Isabelle Roblin
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Centre de Recherche "Texte et Critique de Texte" 2004-10-01
Series:Sillages Critiques
Subjects:
Online Access:http://journals.openedition.org/sillagescritiques/1456
Description
Summary:Created in the 1930s by the Stratemeyer Syndicate of writers, the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories are still very popular today both with teenage girls and American female detective writers. What are the reasons for the enduring appeal of the girl detective? Is Nancy Drew really, as some women writers assert, the literary mother of the new breed of adult fictional women sleuths in the United States? What are the differences and the similarities between Nancy Drew and those fictional sleuths? Why do so many contemporary American female detective writers still somehow, consciously or not, take Nancy Drew as a model for their own fictional private eyes? Those are some of the mysteries this article is going to try and solve.
ISSN:1272-3819
1969-6302