Book of the Day: Lucky Lindy, fictionalized

John Duffield, aka Franklin W. Dixon, Over the Ocean to Paris (Grosset & Dunlap, 1927, circa 1930 printing). Hardcover, red cloth boards as with all the titles in the series. Black stamped title, author name and, on the cover, a Spirit of St Louis lookalike plane. Inscribed on the front endpapers, “David from Barbara, on your 10th birthday.” With one frontispiece b&w illustration, “He Was Flying Directly Over Paris.” HBB price: $20.

One of America’s most innovative children’s and young adult publishers, Franklin Stratemeyer, loved nothing better than adventure tales with lots of shiny new technology.  For nearly a century, Stratemeyer’s hired writers churned out stories involving heroes he invented: the Hardy Boys, Tom Swift, Nancy Drew, The Rover Boys, and dozens of others. 

By the 1920s- when the Ted Scott Flying Series launched- over 80% of all juvenile fiction read in America were a Stratemeyer title. 

In the first book in the sixteen-year, 21-book series, Over the Ocean to Paris published in 1927, Ted Scott achieved fame for being the first pilot to fly over the Atlantic Ocean to Paris, a feat first accomplished in the real world by Charles Lindbergh in May of that year.

The Ted Scott Flying Stories was a series of juvenile aviation adventures created by the Stratemeyer Syndicate using the pseudonym of Franklin W. Dixon (also used for The Hardy Boys) and published almost exclusively by Grosset & Dunlap. The novels were produced between 1927 and 1943. 

The principal author was John W. Duffield, (1859-1946). He produced at least 115 stories, usually book-length, under various names. As Franklin W Dixon, he wrote the nonfantastic Ted Scott Flying Series, based closely on the life of Charles A Lindbergh (1902-1974) and as by Richard H Stone the similar Slim Tyler Air Stories (1930-32). As Allen Chapman, he wrote the first 12 (or 14) volumes of The Radio Boys series (1922-1929), the most substantial of the spate of similarly titled series published in response to the successful launching of broadcast radio in 1922 (the final volume was written by Howard R Garis, later of Uncle Wiggly fame). 

Each volume in the series was introduced by Jack Binns. As Victor Appleton he wrote the Don Sturdy sequence; the final volume was again written by Garis. As Roy Rockwood, he wrote the Bomba the Jungle Boy sequence. His daughter, Elizabeth M Duffield Ward (1895-1983), also worked for the Stratemeyer Syndicate, and was responsible for a number of the Bobbsey Twins tales.

Duffield was a conscientious student of aeronautical technology, and long passages in the Ted Scott books can be traced to such sources as Aviation, the New York Times, Aero Digest, and Science. Through the end of the 1920s, the Lindberg craze caused the series to outsell even The Hardy Boys.