I'm so happy to see another person doing a Nancy Drew version comparison! Mine is very slow going, because it takes a lot of time to organize a chapter-by-chapter comparison, especially with some of the more extensively re-written stories. The 1930 Nancy is not always as fiery as in this first book, especially in those not written by Mildred Wirt Benson, but the modern Nancy (and all the female protagonists) in the re-writes are definitely devotees of the Cult of Domesticity. It'll be interesting to see if Nancy evolves from that as the time period for the re-writes stretches into the 1970s.

I'm going to try to keep doing comparisons, but my rules for book hunting (no online) is making it hard to source some of these - though I did come into a box of 20 at a nearby book sale. Its fascinating what they decided to change.

Wow - just checked out your Nancy Drew Project shelf - that is incredible!

I've been collecting them since I was a girl more than 40 years ago, and I do have all the text versions, but not all the artwork. Of course, I've been mostly limiting myself to just randomly finding the books in junk shops and used book stores.

They are scarce, I should say my big haul was an old specialty mystery book store in MA that went out of business, so it had tons of old Stratemeyer titles. It cleaned me out haha. We go antiquing almost every weekend for my husband's work so I always have the opportunity to hunt through used books.

Lucky you! I love looking through vintage books, but I don't often find them in antique shops around here. The biggest haul was from my niece who hit the jackpot in a Michigan junk shop. My best resource has been Half Price Books bookstores - their corporate home (and biggest store) is just down the street from my office, and they have about a dozen stores around the metroplex. They also standardize the price: $7.50 for vintage books, and ones in less than good shape are $3-$4.