HardyBoys.co.uk ? New guide to the British editions...

[IanR]

Well, here we are at long-last?

After several years, many re-designs, and countless late-nights, we are finally ready to unleash our behemoth of a guide to the British Hardy Boys editions.

We hope you will all enjoy what we have both worked hard to put together!

www.hardyboys.co.uk

Kind Regards,

Ian Regan and Jon Preddle.

[tomswift2002]

Nice.  Although from what I've heard it sounds like Super Sleuths! Vol. 2 may have been lost in the UK as a casualty of Simon & Schuster changing publishers shortly before the book was due to be released.  But that's more or less a rumour that I heard.

[SDLagent]

I'm glad it's finally here!

[MacGyver]

Yeah! Very cool! I'm pretty familiar with the both the American and British editions of The Hardy Boys, so I definitely appreciate the site. I look forward to perusing it.

[kosmicdust]

Nice.  Although from what I've heard it sounds like Super Sleuths! Vol. 2 may have been lost in the UK as a casualty of Simon & Schuster changing publishers shortly before the book was due to be released.  But that's more or less a rumour that I heard.

I'm glad to finally reveal the cover for the British Swift edition of Super Sleuths! 2:



http://www.hardyboys.co.uk/gallery/supersleuths2.php

Santa was kind enough to post a copy of this rare edition through my letterbox, this morning.

Merry Christmas everybody!

Ian.

[SDLagent]

This is cool. I've never seen this before.

And a happy New Year to you!

[MacGyver]

Cool find, Ian. I'm trying to remember a story in that the scene on the cover would be from. It actually evoked an image from The Hardy Boys Survival Handbook for me, where Frank and Joe survive a flood... but then I don't think they actually tried to go out of the house they were in on boats... anyway- nice to have this cover finally filled in and found.
The site has been very useful for me- I've looked through the galleries a number of times. Keep up the good work. And Happy New Year!

[tomswift2002]

The cover artwork comes from, I believe, Phantom Thieves, the second story in the book, where the Hardy's and Nancy have to figure out who is robbing a department store during a flood.  So the scene is most definitely from "Super Sleuths! 2".

[MacGyver]

Okay- I had just forgotten that story then. Cool artwork for the story then.

[tomswift2002]

You know, I was just looking at the Hardyboys.co.uk British guide, and I just realized that in the Collins order of the series, for the most part Collins books 41-48 really didn't change up the order of the books all that much.

#41 The Mysterious Caravan (#54)
#42 Danger On Vampire Trail (#50)
#43 The Bombay Boomerang (#49)
#44 The Masked Monkey (#51)
#45 The Shattered Helmet (#52)
#46 The Clue OF the Hissing Serpent (#53)
#47 The Jungle Pyramid (#56)
#48 The Firebird Rocket (#57)

Now then there were still The Witchmaster's Key and The Sting Of the Scorpion to be published in 1980, however, the Collins order for this section of the series seems to have gone, more or less, straight with the American order.   I would even assume that , aside from Anglicizing the text, The Shattered Helmet is probably the exact same text as it's American counterpart, with no changing of previous and next cases, since Masked Monkey came before it and Hissing Serpent came after it in the American order.  Really in the Collins order, it wouldn't be until the printing of Night Of The Werewolf that we would see the books follow the American order after this short stretch in the 40's.

[MacGyver]

Keep in mind too that Collins and Armada also did not publish some of the original series (The House on the Cliff, The Hidden Harbor Mystery and Tricky Business) so that throws off the order some too. It was confusing for me as a child growing up with this order and then discovering the American order.

[tomswift2002]

I'm aware that Collins didn't publish those books, but still it's interesting that they managed to have 1 book that, even with their order would not have needed the previous and new books changed or that within the story a reference to a previous adventure still makes sense (at one point Helmet references "Danger On Vampire Trail", and with Collins they could've very easily elected to publish Vampire after Helmet, but they didn't).

People point out how Witchmaster was #55 in both orders, but Helmet, while it was published earlier, was still stuck between the Monkey and the Serpent.

[MacGyver]

Even a blind squirrel sometimes finds a nut.