The Bungalow Mystery — The Original 1930 Text, Restored (eBook)

Everybody knows Nancy Drew. Almost nobody has read the book Mildred Wirt Benson actually wrote.

The Bungalow Mystery was Nancy's third case, published on April 28, 1930 — one of three Nancy Drew books released the same day to launch the series, and the last of them that Edward Stratemeyer, the man who created Nancy, lived to edit. He was dead within two weeks.

It opens with a rescue. Caught by a storm on Moon Lake, Nancy and Helen Corning are capsized and struggling when a stranger rows out to save them — Laura Pendleton, an orphan who cannot even swim. Laura's mother has left her a fortune, and the court has appointed her a guardian she has never met: Jacob Aborn. The man who arrives in Aborn's name is boorish and grasping; he demands Laura's jewels and tells her she is nearly penniless. Laura flees to the Drew house, and Nancy follows the false guardian to a deserted bungalow in the woods — where, in the cellar, she finds a man chained to the wall. The real Jacob Aborn. The "guardian" is Stumpy Dowd, a notorious criminal and sometime actor, wearing an honest man's face to steal a fortune of more than a hundred thousand dollars.

In 1960 the book was rewritten. The original's twenty-five chapters became twenty, and the imposture itself was rebuilt: published summaries of the revised edition describe Dowd working with his wife Alma, the two of them impersonating Mr. and Mrs. Aborn together. The original text — the lone impostor, the lone prisoner, and a heroine left chained in a cellar to starve — vanished from print for more than sixty years.

This edition restores the 1930 Bungalow Mystery exactly as it first appeared, collated against three independent printings of the original text. Even the first edition's quirks are preserved and explained, including a first chapter headed "CHAPTER 1" — Arabic numeral — where every later chapter takes a Roman one.

Inside this edition:

• The complete, unabridged 1930 text — all 25 chapters, restored

• Russell H. Tandy's four original 1930 illustrations (three reproduced from an early printing at full resolution; the fourth, missing from every scanned early printing located, is reproduced from the best surviving scan)

• A new introduction telling this book's two-texts story — the rescue, the impostor, and the last book Stratemeyer edited

• "The Woman Who Wrote Nancy" — the story of Mildred Wirt Benson, who wrote this book at twenty-four

• A note on the period text, from its class reflexes to its gunplay

• An appendix, "What Changed in 1960," setting out the verified differences between the two versions

Whether you grew up on the later editions or are meeting Nancy for the first time, this is the third adventure as 1930 read it — the bungalow as it stood.

This Payhip edition is the complete ebook (EPUB), yours to keep. Paperback and hardcover print editions follow on Amazon. A printable Book Club Kit for this edition is also available in this store.

An independent restoration of a public-domain work. Not published, authorized, or endorsed by Simon & Schuster, Inc. NANCY DREW is a registered trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc., used here only to identify the 1930 work.