Rover Boys

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The Rover Boys Series for Young Americans was a popular children's book series of the early 20th century credited to "Arthur M. Winfield", a pseudonym for Edward Stratemeyer. A total of 30 titles were published between 1899 and 1926 and the books remained in print for years afterward.

The original Rover Boys were brothers Tom, Sam, and Dick Rover. Their children (Fred, son of Sam Rover; Jack, son of Dick; Andy and Randy, twin sons of Tom) took over in the "Second Series" which began with Volume 21 "The Rover Boys at Colby Hall", published in 1917. The elder Rovers continued making appearances in the second series.

In addition, there was a related "Putnam Hall" series of six books that featured other characters from the first Rovers series although the Rovers themselves do not appear.

The Rovers were students at a military boarding school: adventurous, prank-playing, flirtatious, and often unchaperoned adolescents who were constantly getting into mischief and running afoul of authority figures as well as criminals.

The series often incorporated emerging technology of the era, such as the automobile, airplanes (The Rover Boys in the Air) and news events, such as World War I.

Like other juvenile fiction of the era, the books often utilized exaggerated ethnic stereotypes and dialect humor. Blacks, Germans , Italians, Chinese, and Irishmen were often portrayed in unflattering tones, though the books also had many heroic characters of these nationalities as well.

[edit] The legacy of the Rover Boys

  • While often overshadowed by better-known and longer-running children's book series such as The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, and Tom Swift, the Rovers were highly successful and enormously influential. They established the template for all later Stratemeyer Syndicate juvenile series to follow.
  • It was Stratemeyer's first series, and one of his favorites. Stratemeyer did all of the writing himself, rather than hiring ghostwriters.
  • In the 1950s a vocal group named after the Rover Boys had a Top 20 hit single with the school-themed "Graduation Day".
  • Over a million Rover Boys books were sold and the titles remained in print by Grosset & Dunlap and later Whitman for years after the final title was published. The most commonly encountered are the green and brown cover editions published by Grosset & Dunlap in the 1910s & 1920s.
  • Three-quarters of a century after embarking on their final adventures, yellowed copies of the Rover Boys books can still be found in American thrift shops and flea markets to this day.

[edit] List Of Titles

01: The Rover Boys At School - 1900
02: The Rover Boys On The Ocean - 1899
03: The Rover Boys In the Jungle - 1899
04: The Rover Boys Out West - 1900
05: The Rover Boys On the Great Lakes - 1901
06: The Rover Boys In the Mountains - 1902
07: The Rover Boys On Land and Sea - 1903
08: The Rover Boys In Camp - 1904
09: The Rover Boys On the River - 1905
10: The Rover Boys On the Plains - 1906
11: The Rover Boys In Southern Waters - 1907
12: The Rover Boys On the Farm - 1908
13: The Rover Boys On Treasure Isle - 1909
14: The Rover Boys At College - 1910
15: The Rover Boys Down East - 1911
16: The Rover Boys In the Air - 1912
17: The Rover Boys In New York - 1913
18: The Rover Boys In Alaska - 1914
19: The Rover Boys In Business - 1915
20: The Rover Boys On a Tour - 1916

The Rover Boys Second Series

21: The Rover Boys At Colby Hall - 1917
22: The Rover Boys On Snowshoe Island - 1918
23: The Rover Boys Under Canvas - 1919
24: The Rover Boys On a Hunt - 1920
25: The Rover Boys In the Land of Luck - 1921
26: The Rover Boys At Big Horn Ranch - 1922
27: The Rover Boys At Big Bear Lake - 1923
28: The Rover Boys Shipwrecked - 1924
29: The Rover Boys On Sunset Trail - 1925
30: The Rover Boys Winning a Fortune - 1926


Some of these books are available for download free at Project Gutenberg.