Sunday, March 27, 2011

Nancy Drew Danish Editions

My very favorite of the Nancy Drew international editions are the books from Denmark.  The Danish editions were published by Martins Forlag in Copenhagen, Denmark.  I love the way Nancy Drew is depicted on the covers.  She is sophisticated and pretty.  To me, Nancy's hairstyle looks timeless on many of the covers.  Here are my very favorite Danish covers.

The Clue in the Diary
Nancy's Mysterious Letter
The Haunted Bridge
The Clue in the Crumbling Wall
The Ghost of Blackwood Hall
The Haunted Showboat
The Moonstone Castle Mystery

You can see all of the Danish editions that I own on my Nancy Drew Danish Editions page.  Which Danish covers do you like the best?

7 comments:

Amy Sisson said...

What fun! I like the first one and the Blackwood Hall one the best.

Some of these remind me a little of my career romance novel covers (the Messner and Dodd Mead books as well as some of Marjory Hall books, esp. the ones done by cover artist Mimi Korach.

Jennifer White said...

I was thinking about the Moonstone Castle cover art. Don't the girls swim the moat in the book? It is rather convenient that they look to be standing upright in the water, all pretty in their swimsuits, and their hair is styled perfectly and not wet at all. :)

Anonymous said...

The covers are very striking; thanks for sharing them! Amy is right; some look very suspenseful and others could be any book for girls. Is anything known about the different illustrators? I wonder why some are copies of the American art and others are different. I think my favorites are Whispering Statue and Jewel Box.

Jennifer White said...

It doesn't look like we have any idea who did the covers. Lea Fox's page has no information, and she always gives the names if she knows them.

It is common among the different international editions for some to copy the original Grosset and Dunlap artwork and others to depict other scenes. One reason why some of the books depict different scenes is because the artwork was drawn based on *other* international editions.

I might show off some of the similar international covers for the same title side by side in a future post.

Paula said...

Wow, very interesting and so hard to pick my favorites! Nancy looks quite different throughout this series, and I can't say I like them all, but I do like the more sophisticated, slightly more mature look. The ones that are awful, though, are the first two - especially that second one, oh my! OK, here are my favorites in order, best first:

1. Clue in the Diary - very classy
2. Lilac Inn - nice closeup with suspense
3. Crumbling Wall- the girls look very nice and are in action related to the story, makes you want to read the story
4. Hidden Window - I like how Nancy looks on this cover and it shows her spying on a mysterious, rather handsome man ;)
5. Haunted Bridge - beautiful! Love her expression in this one - that eyebrow speaks volumes! Very nice looking Nancy and a ghost near an old wooden bridge - what more could you want?
6. Tolling Bell - I like how Nancy looks in this one and how she looks out of the picture, right at you. I would have rated it higher but it's too generic, especially considering the interesting, suspenseful features that could have been added for Tolling Bell.
7. Brass Bound Trunk - Nancy appears more like the All-American girl in this one, yet she is more mature looking. Her expression and the background convey the suspense.

I was surprised to read that in one of the Scandinavian country series (I forget which one), Nancy is called Paula! Do you know which one that is? I considered collecting those books for that reason, but when I saw the cover art, I really didn't like them and I was put me off collecting them. For me, the cover art is a huge part of the pleasure in collecting Nancy Drew.

Jennifer White said...

I found the ones with Paula in them on Lea's site.

Finnish editions

The cover art is a huge consideration for me when collecting the international editions. Some people like to get one sample from each country, but I'm not particularly interested in ones that I find unattractive. I have focused more on the ones that I like the best.

I like even the less attractive Danish editions better than the majority of the cover art for some of the other countries.

I also have sold books that are sized too large. For instance, I once had one of the Flashlight-style Icelandic editions, pictured near the bottom of Lea's Iceland page. I didn't like the cover art, and additionally, the book was so out of proportion in size to the rest of my books that I hated it. The size was a little more than 6 inches by 9 inches. I got rid of it.

Now if I had a huge mansion and had room for an unlimited number of books, I'd collect every single variation and keep all of them. I don't have enough room, so I try to collect just the ones I like the most.

Paula said...

Jennifer, Thanks for the link to Lea's website - some of the the covers she shows are nice enough that I *would* collect them. I didn't realize there were different versions - I'll have to take another look at these! So it is Finland that has Nancy Drew as the "Miss Detective" called Paula ... I will have to write that down so that I don't forget! :) Thank you!