Josephine Lawrence--Children's Books
Children's Books -- Stratemeyer Syndicate
In 1917, during her early years at the Call, she
interviewed Edward Stratemeyer, author of numerous boys' books and
head of the Stratemeyer Syndicate. The resulting article, "The Newarker
Whose Name Is Best Known,"
was published in the December 9, 1917, Call. Lawrence impressed Stratemeyer
enough for him to tell her that, should she want to write juveniles,
he'd be interested in seeing her work. She first submitted a story
she'd written, for which he felt there was no market, then, in 1919,
ghostwrote her first book for the Stratemeyer Syndicate, following an
outline prepared by Stratemeyer. It was Sunny Boy in the
Country, the initial volume in the Sunny
Boy series. Advertised as the adventures of "a little fellow with
big eyes and an inquiring disposition who finds the world a large and
wonderful thing indeed," the series enjoyed moderate success, reaching fourteen volumes before its end in 1931. Using the Syndicate pseudonym Ramy Allen
White, Lawrence wrote all but the last volume, ending her connection with the series only after Stratemeyer's
death in 1930.
She soon expanded her work for the Syndicate, ghostwriting another
series about young children,
the seven-volume Four Little
Blossoms series (1920-30), this time under the
Syndicate pseudonym Mabel C. Hawley. Pleased with her ability to write
about children, Stratemeyer soon approached Lawrence about beginning yet
another such
series, and, posing as Alice Dale Hardy (another Syndicate pseudonym),
she penned all six books in the
Riddle Club series (1924-29). The latter
was somewhat of a departure from the Stratemeyer Syndicate's
previous tots' series, since it used a group of friends rather than
members of only one family as protagonists. It centered on six children
(two apiece from three families), who
form a club to tell riddles. Stratemeyer considered the riddles
such an essential part of the series -- each book usually included
at least one or two chapters devoted to club meetings and the
exchange of brain teasers or riddles -- that he sent Lawrence pages
of riddles along with the usual plot outlines, instructing her to
cross off each riddle as it was used.
In addition to writing tots' series, Lawrence also worked on several of the
Stratemeyer Syndicate's girls' series. Under the Syndicate house name Alice B. Emerson,
she ghostwrote the first four volumes in the Betty
Gordon series in 1920-21, as well as volumes seven and nine
a few years later.
Additionally, when another ghostwriter, W. Bert Foster, was unable
to continue the Syndicate's
Oriole series, Lawrence wrote its third
(and final) volume,
When Oriole Went to Boarding School (1927) as Amy Bell Marlowe.
From 1923 to 1934,
she also ghostwrote the first sixteen books in one of the Syndicate's
most popular girls' series, Honey Bunch,
under the pseudonym
Helen Louise Thorndyke. Although Stratemeyer usually created the
outlines for each volume in a series, he apparently allowed Lawrence to both
outline and write the series's fifth volume, Honey Bunch: Her First
Little Garden.
Lawrence's fiction for the Stratemeyer Syndicate generally
dealt with children leading comfortable, often privileged, lives.
Sunny Boy -- whose nickname embodies his optimistic, naive outlook --
is the only child of affluent parents who (along with his other
relatives) dote on him and try to keep his environment as bright as
his nickname. Like many children's series, Sunny Boy titles
emphasize this affluence, stressing travels and possessions:
Sunny Boy and His Games, Sunny Boy in the Far West, Sunny Boy on
the Ocean, etc. Honey Bunch follows a similar pattern, although
her series titles have the additional gimmick of highlighting
novelty, in that each begins with "Her First" (Honey Bunch:
Her First Visit to the Seashore; Her First Days in Camp; Her First
Auto Tour, etc.). In an analysis of Honey Bunch, Bobbie Ann
Mason observes that the stories "celebrate materialistic values . . .
in Honey Bunch's luxurious world, the thrills of travel, mystery, and
novelty are the pleasures of a comfortable superior order."
[7a] Even Betty
Gordon, who begins her series newly orphaned and spends the first
book at a run-down farm owned by a mean-spirited farmer, soon
finds her circumstances dramatically improved when her wealthy
guardian sends her off to a fashionable boarding school and allows
her to take numerous vacations with her friends.
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On to Lawrence's own juvenile fiction
Notes
[7a] Bobbie Ann Mason. The Girl Sleuth. The Feminist Press, 1975.
[7]"Household Editor."
Copyright 2001 - Deidre Johnson