The 1940s Grosset and Dunlap Formats

In reflecting over the different format changes of the old Grosset and Dunlap books, it becomes apparent that Grosset and Dunlap gave Nancy Drew the best treatment. This is probably partly because of the Stratemeyer Syndicate's ownership of Nancy Drew and partly because Nancy Drew was Grosset and Dunlap best moneymaker.

The Nancy Drew books always had the best illustrations. I can think of no juvenile series that had nicer illustrations than the 1930s Nancy Drew books done by Russell Tandy. Additionally, the Nancy Drew books always had frontispiece illustrations, even during the 1940s. Grosset and Dunlap did everything it could to cut costs during the 1940s, such as taking many series out of print, including the Dana Girls. Grosset and Dunlap eliminated the frontispieces from many series books. Some of the Judy Bolton and Beverly Gray books from the 1940s were printed without the frontispieces. I have never seen a Nancy Drew book without a frontispiece.

Also during the 1940s, Grosset and Dunlap used a wide variety of bindings on its series books. What they probably did was use the bindings intended for one series on another series. For instance, the blue Nancy Drew bindings were used on some of the Beverly Gray books; or, the green Bobbsey Twins bindings were used on some of the Judy Bolton or Beverly Gray books. The Stratemeyer Syndicate series books do not seem to have as many binding variations as the independent series books. The bindings of the Nancy Drew books were always blue. The Beverly Gray books from the same time period were light green, medium green, dark green, medium blue, dark blue, maroon, and red. The Judy Bolton books were light green, medium green, dark green, orange, and red.

The Nancy Drew endpapers stayed pretty consistent during the 1940s. The one inconsistency was when the maroon Dana Girls endpapers were used on the Nancy Drew books. Of course, the Dana Girls endpapers were only used because the Dana Girls went out of print and something had to be done with those leftover endpapers . . .

These have been my thoughts as I have been looking over my Beverly Gray books this weekend. With me, to think is to act, so I have been busy building a Beverly Gray Formats page. I did not realize that there were so many different colors of binding used on the Beverly Gray books during the 1940s! I noticed the lack of frontispieces inside some of the books and realized that Beverly Gray was like an unwanted stepchild. The Beverly Gray dust jacket art was pitiful during the 1940s. Beverly Gray deserved much better, but we are very lucky that the series even survived the move to Grosset and Dunlap. She nearly didn't make it. Beverly Gray's fortuitous move to Grosset and Dunlap might be a good topic for my next post.