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Boy's Friend Library
Boys Realm
The Gem serial
Greyfriars Holiday Annual
Monster Library
Nelson Lee Library:
1st or 'Old' Series
2nd or 'New' Series
3rd Series
4th Series
Nugget 3d Library
Nugget Weekly
Popular (2nd series)
Schoolboys Own Library
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Nelson Lee was a famous detective originally created by Maxwell Scott and first appeared in the tale "A Dead Man's Secret" in the Marvel on the 19th Sept, 1894. He featured in a range of detective adventures in The Marvel, Union Jack, Pluck, and a range of other boys' papers. He then featured in the Boy’s Herald, the stories being written by other Amalgamated Press authors, until 1915, when he was given his own library. Maxwell Scott objected to his character being used by other authors, but was not a well man and sold the copyright to Amalgamated Press for £50.
Probably the most well known author is Edwy Searles Brooks, who wrote the bulk of the stories in the Nelson Lee Library and moved the action to St. Frank's school. The Nelson Lee Library ran until 1933, being re-launched three times, until it was finally amalgamated with the Gem.
St. Franks didn’t appear on the scene until issue 112 in 1917, when Nelson Lee and Nipper went undercover to escape a persistent death threat. You can read the 4th series reprints of those early stories to discover how and why they stayed at St. Frank's. From that point on, St. Franks became the mainstay of the stories, with Nelson Lee as a housemaster, and his ward and assistant Nipper [Dick Hamilton] being captain of the Fourth, and narrator of the stories. Check the other Nelson Lee Library listings pages for more scanned story papers (the earliest I have is number 52 from 1916)
St. Franks was a large school, with four houses, each with a house master, arranged around a triangle. The houses contained dormitories, studies, and various other rooms for daily living. A fifth house consisted simply of class rooms. Most of the characters of the stories lived either in the Ancient House (Nipper, Handforth, Nelson Lee as housemaster) or in the College House (Buster Boots, Christine, etc.) See the plan below for a clearer idea of the layout.
Stories were also written for the Detective Library in 1919, some early Greyfriars Holiday Annuals and the Nugget Weekly and Library. The stories were reprinted in the Boy’s Friend Library, the second series of the Popular, the Monster Library [monthly from November 1925], the Gem (as a serial story), the Nugget 3d Library and the Schoolboy’s Own Library.
Edwy Searles Brooks also wrote a large number of other detective and thriller stories, in particular stories of Sexton Blake in the Union Jack, and post war novels under the pseudonyms Victor Gunn and Berkeley Gray.
No. |
Date |
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1 |
12 June 1915 |
Price 1d. 52pp. Size 7" x 5¼" |
16 |
25 September 1915 |
First story by E S Brooks: "Twenty Fathoms Deep" |
41 |
18 March 1916 |
Pages reduced to 44 |
96 |
7 April 1917 |
Pages reduced to 36 |
112 |
28 August 1917 |
First St. Frank's story |
141 |
16 February 1918 |
Pages reduced to 28 |
147 |
30 March 1918 |
Price increased to 1½d. |
228 |
18 October 1919 |
Pages increased to 36 |
338 |
26 November 1919 |
Price increased to 2d. Pages increased to 44 |
568 |
23 April 1926 |
Last issue of small "Old Series"(1st Series) |
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1 |
1 May 1926 |
1st New Series (2nd Series). Size 8½" x 5½". 44 pp. |
194 |
17 January 1930 |
Last issue of 1st New Series (2nd Series) |
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1 |
25 January 1930 |
2nd New Series (3rd Series) |
161 |
18 February 1933 |
Last issue of 2nd New Series (Third Series) |
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1 |
25 February 1933 |
3rd New Series (4th Series) |
25 |
12 August 1933 |
Last issue of the Nelson Lee Library |
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19 August 1933 |
Amalgamated with "The Gem" |
The main listings here are taken from The Nelson Lee Library and Bibliography of the Writings of Edwy Searles Brooks by Robert C. Blythe.
You can also download the Nelson Lee index in Adobe Acrobat format by right clicking this link and choosing save as.
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