who is franklin w. dixon?

Answer 1

Franklin W. Dixon is the pen name used by a variety of different authors who wrote The Hardy Boys novels for the Stratemeyer Syndicate. This pseudonym was also used for the Ted Scott Flying Stories series.

Answer 2

The first answer is correct, but we do know a bit more about the people involved.

The founder of the company was Edward Stratemeyer, an author of children's books, who had himself had his best success writing under pen names. The Hardy Boys series was one of many Stratmeyer conceived (other popular ones - Tom Swift, the Bobbsey Twins, Nancy Drew).

How it worked - Stratmeyer sketched out the plot line of a book (by chapter), and handed it off to the ghost writer to complete.

Now these ghost writers signed a contract not to divulge their identities. But years later a number of their names did come out. For the Hardy Boys, the most important name was Lee McFarlane, who wrote many of the earliest ones (including the first 16), which are widely thought to be the best.

Here's some further information about Stratmeyer and how he worked, and about McFarlane. AND a list of the ghost writers for a large number of the Hardy Boys books and others

http://www.stratemeyer.org/

Hardy Boys ghostwriters -
http://www.keeline.com/McFarlane/
http://www.keeline.com/Hardy_Boys.pdf
links to ghostwriter lists for other series
http://www.stratemeyer.org/Ghostwriters.html

Answer 3

He is the guy who wrote the hardy boy's series.