Who made Nancy Drew?

Melanie Rehak investigates the origins of the world-famous girl sleuth and discovers two remarkable, revolutionary women.

By Emily Biuso

Sep 19, 2005 | Since 1930, millions of girls (and boys) have spent countless hours buried in the Nancy Drew mysteries, accompanying their heroine to haunted mansions, spooky farms and foreboding caves in hopes of solving the latest mystery. Yet, throughout the several decades that Nancy has reigned as supersleuth extraordinaire (one who is also unfailingly polite, stylish and modest), devoted readers have been mostly clueless about the mystery lurking behind the stories: Who was Carolyn Keene, the author of the long-running series? In her new book, "Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her," Melanie Rehak skillfully answers that question. In the process, she explains how the independence, intrepidness and drive of Nancy's creators seeped into their heroine, passing on to the girl detective some of her best qualities.

Although the Nancy Drew books were penned by women (more on that in a minute), Nancy herself was conceived by Edward Stratemeyer, the children's publishing titan of the early 20th century. (He was also the man behind the Hardy Boys and the Bobbsey Twins.) In 1929, he envisioned Nancy as "an up-to-date American girl at her best, bright, clever, resourceful and full of energy." Yet he was too busy to write her stories on his own. By that point, Stratemeyer had authored many successful children's series, and his books sold so well that he couldn't keep up with demand. Eventually, he took to farming out the work to young writers he hired on the cheap, providing them story outlines and a modest paycheck in exchange for their writing the actual books. He called his company the Stratemeyer Syndicate.

In 1926, Stratemeyer hired Mildred Wirt Benson, a hard-charging newspaperwoman from Iowa and recent college graduate to anonymously pen children's books; she was responsible for the first Nancy Drew novel, "The Secret of the Old Clock," and several mysteries that came afterward. Other writers followed Benson's suit and continued the popular line of Nancy Drew mysteries. But when Harriet Stratemeyer Adams, Stratemeyer's oldest daughter, took over his company after her father's death in 1930, she created many of the plots and story lines of the Nancy stories, and in later years took over as the main author of the series.

The story of these two basically anonymous -- or, rather, pseudonymous -- women forging careers and juggling families in the first half of the 20th century lies at the heart of "Girl Sleuth." As Rehak writes, Benson and Adams "were pioneers during periods of both great progress and great regression for women in this country, examples of persistence and strength and a reminder that even at moments in history -- the turn of the century, the late 1920s, the 1950s -- that we tend to think of as sorry times for women's rights, there were women out there bucking the trends ... they both envisioned her [Nancy] as a girl who could do what she wanted in a world that was largely the province of men, just as each of them had done."

As Benson -- the first woman to earn a master's degree in journalism from the University of Iowa -- testified during a highly publicized 1980 court trial to determine copyright status and ownership of Nancy Drew, "I was probably a rough and tumble newspaper person who had to earn a living, and I was out in the world. That was my type of Nancy. Nancy was making her way in life." (Benson worked as a newspaper reporter for more than 50 years and, after being widowed a second time, took to piloting planes to Central America for solo archaeological explorations.) Adams was every bit as progressive. A woman running a company was practically unheard of then, and she managed to stand up for herself in the male-dominated world of publishing while raising a family -- long before there were many resources for working mothers.

Adams spent more than 40 years feverishly keeping up appearances that Keene was a real person, and Benson spent almost as long modestly avoiding the limelight. Today, of course, hardly anyone remembers the court drama and media speculation over the true author behind the girl detective series. The Stratemeyer Syndicate is gone; Mildred Wirt Benson and Harriet Stratemeyer Adams are dead. Nancy, however, lives on. (The 1959 version of "The Secret of the Old Clock" sold around 150,000 copies in 2002, making it one of the top 50 bestselling children's books.)

Rehak shows that despite the original Syndicate concept to keep all versions of Nancy the same and lacking in any distinction from uncredited author to uncredited author, pieces of Benson and Adams wore off on the girl sleuth. In the end, those personal touches may be what made her so enduring. Though she is constantly updated for relevancy (the latest reincarnation has the detective driving a hybrid car), it's hardly her clothes or her hip slang that keeps subsequent generations reading. It's the perseverance, fearlessness and pluck of Adams and Benson that made Nancy appealing in the 1930s, as well as now.

Salon caught up with Rehak in her book-lined Brooklyn, N.Y., apartment to talk about the women behind Nancy Drew, the girl detective as feminist icon and the global reach of the famous sleuth.

How did this project get started?

I heard an obituary of Mildred Benson on the radio when she died in 2002. In retrospect it makes sense that I wrote this book, but at the time, it wasn't the kind of thing that I was thinking about at all. So I heard this obituary of her and I was interested in her for a lot of reasons. The Nancy Drew thing is obviously the big draw, but she grew up in Iowa, which is where my mom is from, and she sounded really fascinating.

I went out to the University of Iowa to look at her papers, and I spent a day in this archive. There's not that much stuff -- there's about three boxes of stuff, including her scrapbooks. And in with all her stuff were interspersed all these news stories about Harriet Adams from the '60s, when she went public. And it was literally one of these things -- I don't know if you've ever worked in an archive, but there's the morning, and then they close for lunch, and then there's the afternoon. By the time I got to lunch break, the whole thing had assembled itself in my head. There were these two women, and they were rivals, and they were also very similar, for all of their differences, because of what they faced. And then that together they created this character that was so pioneering and that later inspired so many women to go off and do what they wanted -- it literally all just came together.

Next Page: Where Nancy's stubbornness came from

• View blog reactions