In a previous post, I mentioned the great variety of colors of the Grosset and Dunlap bindings from the 1940s. Probably in an effort to save money, Grosset and Dunlap used the bindings from one series on other series. I want to expand on this a little bit, but I want to first mention what happened during the 1960s.
During the early 1960s, the Grosset and Dunlap books switched from tweed books with dust jackets to books where the picture is printed directly on the front cover, called picture covers. The Nancy Drew books were printed with yellow spines, and the Hardy Boys books were printed with blue spines. The earliest Cherry Ames picture covers also were printed with yellow spines just like the Nancy Drew books. The earliest Tom Swift, Jr. picture covers were printed with blue spines just like the Hardy Boys books. Presumably to avoid confusion, the Cherry Ames books were switched to green spines so that they would look different from the Nancy Drew books. The Tom Swift, Jr. books were switched to yellow spines to avoid looking like the Hardy Boys books. It should be noted that the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys books received the preferential treatment; they were not the ones that were changed.
The Judy Bolton picture covers were printed with olive green spines. The Dana Girls books had beige/lavender spines. The Vicki Barr books had blue spines. The Peggy Lane books had vivid pink spines. The Rick Brant books had light gray spines. I will stop short of listing all of them, but while the different series tended to have different colored spines, some of them ended up with the same color.
For instance, the Nancy Drew and Tom Swift, Jr. books both ended up with yellow spines. This must not have been considered a problem since one series was for girls and the other for boys. The reason why the spine colors were changed probably has more to do with the Cherry Ames books looking like the Nancy Drew books. After all, the Stratemeyer Syndicate was likely concerned that people might accidentally purchase a Cherry Ames book thinking that it was a Nancy Drew book. Since the Syndicate did not own the rights to the Cherry Ames series, this would have been very bad indeed. They would not have wanted the Cherry Ames books to take away from the sales of the Nancy Drew books.
To stray some from my primary topic, the Dana Girls books were often confused with the Nancy Drew books, and in this case, the confusion was caused on purpose. The Stratemeyer Syndicate wanted the Nancy Drew books to help sell the Dana Girls books. Both series were Syndicate properties. The Dana Girls books were always described as "by the author of the Nancy Drew books" on the front of all of the 1950s and 1960s books, and on the back panel of the 1930s and 1940s dust jackets. When I used to purchase books in antique stores, the Dana Girls books were usually described as Nancy Drew books by the sellers. This also happens quite often on eBay. People see the name Nancy Drew placed prominently at the top of the book and think that the book is a Nancy Drew book.
Going back to the discussion of binding styles, it was not so important for the books to be different colors during the time of the dust-jacketed books. The dust jackets covered the books, so several series could have the same color of binding. In fact, the colors could be mixed and matched, if necessary.
During the 1930s, the bindings stayed rather consistent in color for all of the series. There are just a couple of exceptions. The Hardy Boys books were originally red and changed to brown. The Beverly Gray series did have more than one color of binding, but that series was originally published by A. L. Burt/Blue Ribbon Books. The multiple binding colors were likely a residual effect from the previous print history.
For the other series, the colors did not change during the 1930s. The Nancy Drew books were always blue; the Judy Bolton books were always green; and the Dana Girls books were always purple.
For the 1940s Grosset and Dunlap books, the different series changed colors quite frequently. It likely is because of reduced print runs and the World War II rationing that Grosset and Dunlap was so inconsistent with its 1940s books. The Judy Bolton and Beverly Gray series in particular were printed in a wide variety of colors. It may in fact be that the sales of the Judy Bolton and Beverly Gray books were quite poor at that time, so Grosset and Dunlap used extra bindings from the Nancy Drew and Bobbsey Twins series on those books. This is purely speculation.
What is obvious is that the Nancy Drew books were
always blue. After the first few years, the Hardy Boys books were always brown, with the exception of
The Short Wave Mystery, which has been found in a maroon binding. The maroon Short Wave was probably an accident, since it is quite scarce. My point is that this is further evidence that the Stratemeyer Syndicate books received preferential treatment by Grosset and Dunlap.
During the 1950s, the Nancy Drew, Tom Swift, Jr., Beverly Gray, and Vicki Barr books were all blue tweed. The Hardy Boys and Connie Blair books were both tan tweed. The Judy Bolton, Cherry Ames, and Rick Brant books were all red/brick tweed. The Dana Girls and Bobbsey Twins books were both a greenish tweed.
With only one exception, Grosset and Dunlap stayed consistent during the 1950s with which series had which colors of binding. The one oddity is that the first eight Dana Girls books printed in 1954 have a blue binding that does not look just like the ones used on the other series books, such as Nancy Drew, that had the blue binding. Some collectors have observed that the "blue velvet" Dana Girls books seem to appear in Canada with an above average frequency and have speculated that those books may have been a Canadian printing. It would explain why the Dana Girls series has this one deviation from the 1950s standard of using the same color on all volumes of a particular series.
It is only the Stratemeyer Syndicate series, like Nancy Drew, Tom Swift, Jr., the Dana Girls, and Hardy Boys, that can be easily purchased in complete runs with the same color of binding or the same spine color. All of the other series suffered a second-rate treatment, and this makes it problematic for collectors who want all of the books in the series to have the same design. While all of the Judy Bolton books were designed the same for the picture cover books, not all of the books were printed in that format due to low demand. #30, 31, and 33 do not exist as picture cover books. On the other hand, #35 through 38 were only printed as picture cover books and never had dust jackets. No matter what design a Judy Bolton collector prefers, the books will have to be purchased in more than one format. Such is the reality of collecting most Grosset and Dunlap series books.
