A Very Unusual Nancy Drew Book

I bought a very interesting book last week. It is one of the most interesting purchases I have made in the last couple of years. I believe it is a printing anomaly, and a rather bizarre one at that. In the past, I have referred to several Nancy Drew printing anomalies as "bizarre," but this one trumps them all. This book is a thousand times more bizarre. If I did not have it in my possession, I would think it was a scam. In fact, when I viewed the seller's auction, I was concerned that the book was not what it appeared to be.


For those of you who have Farah's Guide, I have a book with boards that match that of Format #13. The boards are Cover Stock #6. The book is Format #13 in every way except for one thing: The book has digger endpapers. No one has ever mentioned seeing digger endpapers on any book from Format #13.

Nancy Drew books in Format #13 were printed during 1949 and 1950. Format #13 books are commonly called "solid blue" books. These are the books that came right before the tweed format. The Format #13 books all have blue silhouette endpapers—or so we thought. The tweed format began in 1951, and for a short time, the early tweed books were printed with blue silhouette endpapers. The digger endpapers were not introduced until 1953, two years later.

It does not make sense for a Format #13 book to have digger endpapers, since Format #13 ended two years before the introduction of the digger endpapers. As soon as I had the book in my possession, I carefully looked it over to see if it could be some kind of scam. It does not look like the book has been tampered with, except for the unfortunate fact that someone took black ink or marker and heavily darkened the top edge of the text block. Aside from that, the book looks fine to me.

I decided that the book is not a hoax. My other thought was that the book could be some kind of international edition. We have discussed the "blue velvet" Dana Girls books recently in one of the Yahoo! Groups, but I see nothing to indicate that this book is something similar to that. The dust jacket has no special codes, nor does the book have any special markings that I can find. Besides, if the book were an international edition, it seems we would have seen some of these already.

If the book is not a hoax or an international edition, then it must be a very strange misprint variant. But how? How would digger endpapers end up on a book that is in an earlier format?

The dust jacket meets all of the points for the 1955C-34 printing according to Farah's 12th edition. The book seems to be Format #13 from 1949-1950 except for the digger endpapers. After closely examining the book against Farah's Guide, I determined that the inside of the book cannot be from before 1953. The first page of the story does not have the title of the book present on that page. Printings from 1953 on did not have the title on the first page of the story. Books in Format #13 are supposed to have the title present on the first page of the story. Therefore, this book that appears to be in Format #13 is from 1953 or later.

It could be that a 1955 dust jacket is on a 1953 book, or it could be that the book and jacket are from 1955. I have checked the book and the jacket, and I can find nothing about the wear to the jacket that is obviously different than that of the book. This does not prove that the jacket is original to the book, but no evidence exists to disprove it. If we assume that the book and jacket are from 1955, then we have a very bizarre variant book.

Both Jenn Fisher and David Farah agree that this is a very unusual book. David Farah wrote:

"It seems strange to me that this hasn't come up before. Not on any volume where there were several years between cover stocks rather than just being used near the time they were discontinued.

I get lots of potential listings which turn out to be incorrect, which is why I usually don't list anything remotely controversial unless I get two confirmations.

I trust that Jennifer knows what she is looking at, but I still find it unusual.

I have to agree. Consider that in decades of gathering data about the Nancy Drew series that David Farah has never run across a book like this one. Exactly what do I have here? How did it happen?

I have one theory, which is that solid blue boards from another series ended up on a Nancy Drew book. I have always assumed that all of the Grosset and Dunlap books switched from this format to tweed at about the same time. I know that the Judy Bolton books remained in the tweed format during the early 1960s longer than other series. For that reason, I wondered whether any Grosset and Dunlap books remained in this format longer before going to the tweed format.

If so, the books that would be of interest would be ones that are solid blue. Vicki Barr and Beverly Gray are the two series that come to mind. If anyone can think of others, please let me know. I checked my Beverly Gray books, and it appears that Beverly Gray went to the tweed format at least a year later than Nancy Drew, but likely not as late as 1953. I have never paid enough attention to Vicki Barr to know exactly what happened with the Vicki Barr series.

I will have additional comments to make about this book and related topics in the coming days.