Tom Swift

1. 1910: Tom Swift and His Motor-Cycle
2. 1910: Tom Swift and His Motor-Boat
3. 1910: Tom Swift and His Airship
4. 1910: Tom Swift and His Submarine Boat
5. 1910: Tom Swift and His Electric Runabout
6. 1911: Tom Swift and His Wireless Message
7. 1911: Tom Swift Among the Diamond Makers
8. 1911: Tom Swift in the Caves of Ice
9. 1911: Tom Swift and His Sky Racer
10. 1911: Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle
11. 1912: Tom Swift in the City of Gold
12. 1912: Tom Swift and His Air Glider
13. 1912: Tom Swift in Captivity
14. 1912: Tom Swift and His Wizard Camera
15. 1912: Tom Swift and His Great Search Light
16. 1913: Tom Swift and His Giant Cannon
17. 1914: Tom Swift and His Photo Telephone
18. 1915: Tom Swift and His Aerial Warship
19. 1916: Tom Swift and His Big Tunnel
20. 1917: Tom Swift in the Land of Wonders
21. 1918: Tom Swift and His War Tank
22. 1919: Tom Swift and His Air Scout
23. 1920: Tom Swift and His Undersea Search
24. 1921: Tom Swift Among the Fire Fighters
25. 1922: Tom Swift and His Electric Locomotive
26. 1923: Tom Swift and His Flying Boat
27. 1924: Tom Swift and His Great Oil Gusher
28. 1925: Tom Swift and His Chest of Secrets
29. 1926: Tom Swift and His Airline Express
30. 1927: Tom Swift Circling the Globe
31. 1928: Tom Swift and His Talking Pictures
32. 1929: Tom Swift and His House on Wheels
33. 1930: Tom Swift and His Big Dirigible
34. 1931: Tom Swift and His Sky Train
35. 1932: Tom Swift and His Giant Magnet
36. 1933: Tom Swift and His Television Detector
37. 1934: Tom Swift and His Ocean Airport
38. 1935: Tom Swift and His Planet Stone
39. 1939: Tom Swift and His Giant Telescope
40. 1941: Tom Swift and His Magnetic Silencer

A collection of Tom Swifties

The original Tom Swift series was created by Edward Stratemeyer — the same peson who created series such as the Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew and The Bobbsey Twins. Tom arrived in 1910, some time before Nancy Drew (1921) and the Hardy Boys (1927).

Edward did not actually write any of these books. He created pseudonyms for authors: Victor Appleton for the Tom Swift series, Franklin Dixon for the Hardy Boys, Carolyn Keene for Nancy Drew, and others for several other series. Various people ghost-wrote the books.

Howard Garis was the actual author for most of not all of the original Tom Swift books. Howard is best known for his Uncle Wiggily stories.

There have been several Tom Swift series since the original ones. The later ones starred a younger Tom Swift, the son of the Tom Swift in the original series.

The Tom Swift series was the most popular juvenile series of its day, although both Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys were for more popular when they arrived. The Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys series have been kept alive, and have been rewritten a couple of times to bring them more up-to-date and to remove less politically correct content. Personally, I find that the newer versions are much dryer and less enjoyable than the originals. The Tom Swift series has never been rewritten.

Tom is a youthful inventor, and like the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew, he often gets involved in mysteries. His inventions are always far better than anything in existence. But they sure seem to break down a lot. And whenever he competes with others, he usually only wins by the slimmest of margins. The inventions sometimes require quite a stretch of the imagination. The idea that a father and son could build a large submarine in just a few months, for example, and that the submarine is capable of diving to a depth of three miles — and that they also had time to construct diving suits to let them leave the submarine at depths of over two miles — well, you just have to suspend disbelief and enjoy the story.

The books are really quite poorly written. They're filled with long sentences with lots of clauses — and lots of adverbs and adjectives. And there's a certain lack of consistency. While diving at a shipwreck, for example, the group can only communicate with each other by means of body signals. But when a shark appears, they're suddenly chatting away.

Howard Garis's frequent use of adverbs (as in "he said musingly") gave rise to "Tom Swifties". These puns were popular back when I was in high school in the '60s. Some were rather clever ("I was in my kayak, practicing my eskimo roll", said Tom self-righteously).

A collection of Tom Swifties

Unlike the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew series, the copyright to the original Tom Swift series has lapsed and the books are in the public domain. I've included the full text of several of the books here. Some people will find some of the text offensive: it's far from Politically Correct for today's world. Some things are quite humorous to us today: in the first book, the author writes about how Tom is able to speed along at breakneck speed on his motorcycle. We later learn that it takes him three hours to travel 40 miles, so his "breakneck speed" is about 15 mph!

NOTE: As far as I know, these books are now copyright free. I'm not trying to make any money from these books. If I'm infringing on anyone's rights, I will happily modify or remove this content.