Publisher's Synopsis
Nick Carter is the most published character in American literature and the second-most published character in world literature, with the exception of Dixon Hawke. This site is meant to provide information on him. (There's no other site on the Internet devoted to Carter, so why not me?)Nick Carter first appeared in "The Old Detective's Pupil; or, The Mysterious Crime of Madison Square," in the September 18, 1886 issue of the New York Weekly. Ormond G. Smith, the son of one of the founders of Street & Smith, provided the outline of the first story to John Russell Coryell, a dime novelist, who wrote that first story and two sequels and then turned the character to over a dozen writers, who immediately began churning out stories; the character was immediately popular and the demand for him soon outstripped the ability of one writer to produce them. Among the authors who had a hand in writing Nick Carter stories were A.L. Armagnac, William Perry Brown, George Waldo Browne, Frederick Russel Burton, O.P. Caylor, Stephen Chalmers, Weldon J. Cobb, William Wallace Cook, S.A. D. Cox, Frederick William Davis, E.C. Derby, Walter Bertram Foster, Charles Witherle Hooke, William Cadwalder Hudson, George Charles Jenks, Charles Agnw Maclean, St. George Rathborne, Eugene T. Sawyer, Vincent Scott, Samuel C. Spalding, Edward L. Stratemeyer himself, Alfred B. Tozer, and R.F. Walsh. The author who produced the most Nick Carter stories was "Chickering Carter," the pseudonym of Frederic van Rensselaer Dey (1861-1922), a dime novelist who also wrote a number of Jack Wright stories; Dey produced several hundred Nick Carter stories, starting out The Nick Carter Library when it started in 1896.Nick Carter appeared in the following magazines: Ainslee's Magazine (Nov. 1900-March 1901), Army and Navy Comics (May-Aug 1941), Clues-Detective (July 1936), Crime Buster (May 1939), Detective Story Magazine (Oct 1915-May 1927), Doc Savage Comics (Aug-Oct 1943), Magnet Library (Sept 1897-Feb 1907), New Magnet Library (Feb 1907-June 1933), New Nick Carter Library (Jan-June 1897), New Nick Carter Weekly (June-Oct 1897), Nick Carter Weekly (Oct 1897-Feb 1903), New Nick Carter Weekly (Feb 1903-Sept 1912), New York Weekly (Sept 1886-Aug 1910), New York Weekly Welcome (Aug 1910-Nov 1915), Nick Carter Detective Library (Aug 1891), Nick Carter Library (Aug 1891-Dec 1896), Nick Carter Magazine (March 1933-Dec 1935), Nick Carter Detective Magazine (Jan-June 1936), Nick Carter Stories (Sept 1912-Oct 1915), Old Broadbrim Weekly (Aug-Sept 1903), Secret Service Series (Nov 1887-Nov 1892), Shadow Comics (Mar 1940-Sept 1949), Shadow Magazine (June-Oct 1944), and Shield Series (Sept 1894-June 1895). (This is not including the British story papers his stories were reprinted in.) There was also the radio show Nick Carter; Master Detective, which ran from 1943 through 1955, a series of comic books during the 1940s, a number of movies, and over 250 paperbacks from 1964 through 1990. The paperbacks, though, were the vomitous and contemptible Executioner and Killmaster series, which are "Nick Carter" stories in name only.Carter is an all-American detective (or "all-American" in the way the authors thought someone would be "all-American") who had a great visual similarity to Eugen Sandow, the famed strongman of the early 1900s. One early story described him in this way: Giants were like children in his grasp. He could fell an ox with one blow of his small, compact fist. Old Sim Carter had made the physical development of his son one of the studies of his life. Only one of the studies, however. Young Nick's mind was stored with knowledge--knowledge of a peculiar sort. His gray eyes had, like an Indian's, been trained to take in minutest details fresh for use. His rich, full voice could run the gamut of sounds, from an old woman's broken, querulous squack to the deep, hoarse notes of a burly ruffian.
