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Rover BoysRover Boys is 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 decades 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. The Rovers were wealthy 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, 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. The legacy of the Rover Boys - It was Stratemeyer's first series, and one of his favorites. Stratemeyer did most - if not all - of the writing himself, rather than hiring ghostwriters.
- Fans of the Rovers credit the boarding school campus setting as being mirrored uncannily in the "Harry Potter" books a century later.
- In the 1950s a vocal group named after the Rover Boys had a Top 20 hit single with the school-themed "Graduation Day".
- Millions of Rover Boys books were sold and the titles remained in re-release by various publishers for decades after the series ended. The most commonly encountered are the brown cover editions published by Grosset & Dunlap in the 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.
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