The Hidden Staircase — The Original 1930 Text, Restored (eBook)

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

The Hidden Staircase was Nancy's second case, published on April 28, 1930 — one of three Nancy Drew books released the same day to launch the series. Benson, the young Iowa journalist who ghosted most of the early volumes, later called it her personal favorite of all the Nancy Drews she wrote. Two weeks after it appeared, Edward Stratemeyer, the man who created Nancy, was dead.

In 1959 the book was rewritten from the ground up. The original's twenty-five chapters became twenty. The villain, Nathan Gombet, became Nathan Gomber. The Turnbull sisters' house — called simply The Mansion in 1930 — became Twin Elms. The twin sisters Rosemary and Floretta became a mother and daughter. An accomplice, Willie Wharton, was invented. The original text vanished from print for more than sixty years.

It is a darker, stranger, more exciting book than the one that replaced it. A stranger comes to the Drew house and threatens Carson Drew — then lures him away with a false report that Nancy lies injured, and holds him prisoner, bound to a chair, in the house next door. The Turnbull twins are being frightened out of The Mansion by a "haunting" meant to force a sale. Nancy takes the case alone: she is locked in Gombet's room of stuffed birds, escapes through a secret door, falls headlong down the hidden staircase and wakes in the underground passage between the two houses, in the dark, her flashlight dying. Her father's revolver — mentioned twenty times in this text — is in her traveling bag.

This edition restores the 1930 Hidden Staircase exactly as it first appeared, collated against three independent printings of the original text (one silent transcription error corrected: the sisters are the "Trumbulls" at the point where the printing says so). Even the first edition's quirks are preserved and explained, including a chapter whose title differs between the contents page and the chapter itself.

Inside this edition:

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

• Russell H. Tandy's four original 1930 illustrations, reproduced from an early printing

• A new introduction telling this book's two-texts story — the haunted house, the rewritten villain, and the sisters who stopped being twins

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

• A note on the period text, including the unnamed servant the 1930 book drew to the stereotypes of its era

• An appendix, "What Changed in 1959," 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 second adventure as 1930 read it — the staircase as it was built.

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.