The Mystery at Lilac Inn — The Original 1930 Text, Restored (eBook)

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

all the early Nancy Drews, this is the one that disappeared completely.

The Mystery at Lilac Inn was Nancy's fourth case, published in 1930, the year the series began — the first sequel, and the proof that Nancy could come back. Nancy stops for lunch at Lilac Inn and reunites with her classmate Emily Crandall, who is turning eighteen and about to inherit the famous Crandall jewels — forty thousand dollars' worth, mostly diamonds — from her guardian, Mrs. Jane Willoughby. That night the handbag holding the jewels vanishes from the inn's dining room, and suspicion falls on the guardian who was carrying it. Meanwhile, the temporary housekeeper Nancy has just hired into her own home — Mary Mason, bold, secretive, and spending money she should not have — is the real thief, working with her brother Bud and the riverman Tom Tozzle. Nancy overhears them in a storeroom, is captured, and is taken downriver bound and gagged aboard their boat — and left below decks, still tied, as the boat begins to sink.

In 1961 the Stratemeyer Syndicate modernized the early Nancy Drew books. Books 1–3 were cut and reworked. This book was replaced. The published summaries of the 1961 Lilac Inn describe a different novel under the same title: Emily renamed Emily Willoughby, a Nancy impersonator framing her for crimes, a haunted grove, scuba diving, a damaged submarine, and a theft at a twenty-first birthday dinner. The collector record is blunt about it: the revisions carry over original text "with the exception of book 4." Not one scene of Benson's 1930 story survived into the book that replaced it — and the 1930 original itself vanished from print for more than sixty years.

This edition restores the 1930 Mystery at Lilac Inn exactly as it first appeared, collated against two independent printings of the original text, with which it agrees completely. Nancy is sixteen again ("a pretty girl of perhaps sixteen"), in the blue roadster she still drives, and the chapter headings are taken from the text itself and verified against the 1930 contents page at every entry.

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 sequel that proved the series, and the replacement that erased it

• "The Woman Who Wrote Nancy" — the story of Mildred Wirt Benson, who wrote this book in the series' first year

• A note on the period text, including the 1930 opening's agency sequence and the stereotypes it trades in

• An appendix, "What Changed in 1961," setting out the verified differences between the two versions — and why, this time, there is no chapter mapping to draw

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