The frontispiece has been a long running part of the Nancy Drew books. While they have been revised and changed over time, they were not discontinued from the formats as the glossy internals were. Russell H. Tandy illustrated most of the original text Nancys. His illustrations are the most sophisticated portrayal of Nancy--timeless classics. The frontispieces shown above are all from volume #1, The Secret of the Old Clock. From left to right above, they reference the following pages: 100 in original text, 100 in original text, 129 in the revised text. The frontispieces on the left and middle above are by Russell H. Tandy. I am not sure who did the illustration for the frontispiece above on the right.

The glossy frontispieces were used from 1930 up until 1940 when the plain frontispiece was introduced. Tandy revised most of the art in the glossy frontispieces for the plain frontispieces. The changes were not drastic--same scene for the most part, but as evidenced above, a change in appearance--clothing, hair, accessory styles. From 1930's on the left to 1940's in the middle. There were a few plain frontispieces which Tandy did that were not the same as his previous glossy frontispieces--different scenes entirely--one example of this is the frontispieces for volume #3, The Bungalow Mystery. The frontispiece above on the right, is a different scene from the other two. Most of the plain frontispieces used for the revised volumes of #'s 1-31 were not always the same scene as the original glossy and plain frontispieces. The plain frontispieces were still classic Tandy. Tandy Frontispieces were used for volume #'s 1-26. Those frontispieces for volume #'s 28-56 are rather unremarkable when compared to the Tandy illustrations.

The 3 glossy internals were used from 1930 until 1937 for volume #'s 1-13. These are all by Russell H. Tandy, and again, timeless and classic Nancy. Shown above are the 3 internals to volume #1, The Secret of the Old Clock. The pictures from left to right above reference the following pages in the original text: 30, 131, 158.

The 5 internal line drawings shown above are from volume #1, The Secret of the Old Clock. From left to right and top to bottom, above, the illustrations reference the following pages in the revised text: 3, 57, 90, 121, 159. They were added to the books beginning with volume #32, The Scarlet Slipper Mystery. They appear in volume #'s 32-56 and the revised text versions of volume #'s 1-31. These pale in comparison to the Russell H. Tandy internal glossy illustrations however there are some nicely done ones in the 1950s and 1960s. Illustrations from the 1970s tend to feature more stick-figure style drawings with less detail and these are not as pretty.