From Super Fan to Super Historian…The Case of the Missing Documents Or how MWB-HARP Came to Be

To celebrate the 121^st birthday of the original Nancy Drew ghostwriter, Mildred Wirt Benson, I ask you all to join me in fulfilling a legacy that was derailed a bit in the 1990s. Numerous papers highlighting Benson’s career not only in Nancy Drew but her many other books and series found themselves in private hands. Some have thankfully found their way back to the public in archives as some of these collectors are starting to downsize after thirty years.  

I wear a lot of hats in the Nancy Drew Collecting community. Author, researcher, consultant, Nancy Drew Sleuths President, event planner, licensee, Nancy Drew expert and fan. Over the years in this journey to following the clues to Nancy Drew, I have gone from fan of the books to collector of the books, to historian behind the scenes and throughout it all, it has been like trying to solve a puzzling Nancy Drew mystery at times. Especially when delving into the mysterious history behind Nancy Drew and her creators.

I’ve made numerous trips to archives over the last several decades, interviewed former Syndicate employees and ghostwriters and I’ve sleuthed out mysteries behind the scenes – and I often follow in the footsteps of history and of our famous sleuth!

Nancy Drew, though a fictional character created nearly one hundred years ago, has influenced many of her readers and has gone on many great adventures. So many since 1930 – over six hundred mysteries solved. She’s served as a role model to so many kids over the generations and even has inspired the likes of our US Supreme Court Justices. These books have been fun and entertaining, exciting and thrilling mysteries for kids, and even educational at times. They hooked kids to reading and made them fall in love with mysteries, cliffhangers, and saving the world, once case at a time! There is timeless nostalgia in every Nancy Drew book and fans still love to read them, reminisce about their childhood, and even collect pieces of it.

One of the greatest legacies is the fans, who have loved and treasured these books so much, that they have passed them down to their kids and grandkids over the years, helping to keep Nancy’s great spirit alive and giving the publishers a reason to keep reprinting them and keep producing new books in new series as the decades go by.

Part of the nostalgia lies in the fascinating history behind the scenes of the books among Nancy Drew’s creators from publishers to illustrators, to ghostwriters to the Stratemeyer Syndicate. Thankfully a lot of the publishing history of these series and others produced by the Syndicate has been preserved in a large donation from Simon & Schuster in the 1990s of over 300 boxes of materials to the New York Public Library which one can sort through at the Manuscripts and Archives Division. There are even original art paintings and books, though the books have never been made available for viewing by the public yet. There are smaller archives and collections of some material scattered around at various universities, including Harriet Stratemeyer Adams’s own Wellesley College. And some of the people who worked at the Syndicate or for the Syndicate have archives of papers at universities – like Andrew Svenson and Mildred Wirt Benson. Benson’s archive is located at the University of Iowa’s Iowa Women’s Archive in Iowa City, IA.

Thanks to the donation of my Jennifer Fisher Nancy Drew Collection of over 5000 items in 2019 to the Toledo Public Library, we have begun to build up a wonderful archive of Benson’s original papers and items related to Nancy Drew plus other books and series written by Benson. The library has a Rare Book Room sponsored by The Toledo Blade up in their local history wing of the 3^rd floor, which is an amazing archive of local history, documents, art and original books. In the early 2000s the library acquired a full set of Benson’s 135 published books from collector Rick Sayers, a founding member of Nancy Drew Sleuths, and it is housed in the Rare Book Room. Also housed there are items from an estate sale of Benson’s only daughter, including Benson’s application for NASA’s journalist in space program plus awards and other ephemera.

Part of my mission, officially launched as MWB-HARP (Mildred Wirt Benson – Historical Artifacts Recovery Project) in 2025, is to play detective much like Nancy Drew and seek out original documents and letters related to Benson – many of which were sold in those 1990s sales. We have begun to reclaim quite a few of these documents in large part thanks to collectors, who have had them for around 30 years now, some just collecting dust on shelves or hiding away in filing cabinets, not living their best life. Now they can be preserved and properly archived for future generations of fans and scholars, so that the legacy of Nancy Drew and Benson among other creators will be preserved and can live on infinitely. It has become my mission in life to see every bit of it returned to these archives.

How can you help? If you own any original letters or documents related to Benson’s personal life, journalism career, writing career, etc. we would love to help you get these into archives – either in Iowa or Toledo so they can live their intended life and preserve history and this great legacy. Copies would be wonderful to create a record, but we’d prefer sales or donations if possible. It can be done!

In order for the library to be able to purchase items for the archives, please support the Nancy Drew Fund at the Toledo Public Library which helps us acquire these original documents or ephemera not in the collection. It also helps the collection grow and be archived, digitized among other collection goals.

I want to highlight some of the great items we’ve added to the collection in Toledo in the last year thanks to MWB-HARP and collectors who were willing to join in on this adventure to sleuth out historic ephemera and preserve it. Please see images (click for larger views) at the end of this blog of items listed below:

- 2 pages of a 3-page plot Mildred Wirt Benson sent to Edward Stratemeyer in the late 1920s which I personally acquired and donated at the 95^th Anniversary ND Conference in Toledo

- Nancy Drew Files Ghostwriter Vicki Berger Erwin’s manuscript and other associated letters and ephemera for Nancy Drew Files #83 Diamond Deceit

- Nancy Drew Notebooks #11 Pen Pal Puzzle painting from collector Victoria Broadhurst

- Nancy Drew Files painting for #38 The Final Scene from collector Ilana Nash

- Nearly 3 dozen publisher letters, royalty statements related to Benson’s own books and series including Penny Parker and her scout series

- MWB Signed Pirate Brig book

- Numerous articles, letters, signed books, photos and other memorabilia from close friend and Toledo Blade coworker, Nancy Hawkins

- Original Nancy Drew Reporter movie poster from Geoffrey S. Lapin

- Contents of Benson’s Toledo Blade desk, Penny Parker outline, St. Nicholas bound volume with her first published short story, The Courtesy, and more ephemera from Geoffrey S. Lapin

- Letter from author Leslie Garis to MWB, Garis’s grandfather Howard was a prolific ghostwriter for the Stratemeyer Syndicate as was her grandmother Lilian. From Collector Ilana Nash.

- Letter from Syndicate partner Andrew Svenson to MWB about her writing for the Dana Girls series. From Collector Ilana Nash.

- Framed Nancy Drew model shot for The Clue in the Broken Locket (Nappi 4^th art)

And there is more to come as soon a we get more donations for the Nancy Drew Fund at Toledo Public Library. If you’d like to help us acquire important pieces of Nancy Drew’s history and the life and career of Mildred Wirt Benson, please donate to the Nancy Drew Fund and be a part of helping create this great legacy. See below for details on donating to the fund.

I cannot think of a better way to spend my final decades on this earth in collecting, researching, writing and building this legacy for the ages. And thanks to the Nancy Drew community, we can do it and solve the case of the missing documents!

To donate to the Nancy Drew Fund, you can click here to donate online, or you can send a check payable to the Library Legacy Foundation with the memo line stating, “Nancy Drew Fund” and send it to the following address:

Library Legacy Foundation

The Nancy Drew Fund

325 N. Michigan Street

Toledo, OH 43604

If you have documents and ephemera you would like to donate or sell, or at least provide copies of, please e-mail me at nancydrewsleuth@aol.com or reach out via my PO Box at:

Jennifer Fisher

P.O. Box 511

Higley, AZ 85236-0511

Happy 120th to Mildred Wirt Benson & a Huge Debt of Gratitude to Geoffrey S. Lapin

Happy 120th to Mildred Wirt Benson!!

Her 120th birthday since her birth would have been on July 10, 2025, though she passed away at the ripe age of 96 in May of 2002. Several of my good friends in Nancy Drew and I wanted to visit the legendary Geoffrey S. Lapin, the man who discovered Millie was Carolyn Keene and other famous pseudonyms back in the 1960s. We even celebrated with a few cupcakes and special cupcake toppers.

My friend Mary and I were able to make a quick trip up to the Toledo Public Library to donate some wonderful items that Geoff reached out to me about wanting to go to Toledo - including his beautiful 1939 Nancy Drew Reporter movie poster. The library will be framing it to hang in my Jennifer Fisher Nancy Drew Collection room. Geoff also donated the desk contents of Millie’s from The Toledo Blade when she passed which included a lot of notes, notebooks and letters and cards from fans and even schools some of which are pictured below in this blog.

There was an article someone wrote and sent her, pages from The Cool One. An unpublished radio transcript. Most of an outline for the Penny Parker book, Hoofbeats on the Turnpike. Plus, a child reader with a short story first published in St. Nicholas and some bound volumes of St. Nicholas with her short stories in them. They will be invaluable for researchers and fans who visit the Toledo Public Library and will add to and enhance the collection they have there. Geoff even made it official by signing the paperwork to donate his research, articles, signed books and other ephemera related to Mildred Wirt Benson to the University of Iowa Women's Archive to join the papers and collections of Mildred Wirt Benson and Carolyn Stewart Dyer. What an amazing gift and honor!

Many thanks to Geoff for his generous gifts to the library so that fans and researchers can learn so much and learn about his journey to discovering Millie and all the work he did to get Millie recognition for being such a great writer and the woman behind a lot of famous pseudonyms!

Mysterious Life of a Nancy Drew Collector - The Jennifer Fisher Nancy Drew Collection - Toledo Library

The clicking of keys on the typewriter, a ghostly author tapping away, churning out mysterious yarn after yarn, bringing to life many characters including the most famous teenage sleuth of the 20^th Century. Mildred Wirt Benson’s Nancy Drew was something of a force to be reckoned with - a plucky girl with a zeal for adventure and daring escapades. And many had no clue early on that Benson’s Carolyn Keene, ghostwriter of the original Nancy Drew books for The Stratemeyer Syndicate, was writing some of these nostalgic mysteries in Toledo’s Old Orchard, ensconced in her two-story home, often locked away in her writer’s room and library. The tale of Nancy Drew and her dauntless ghostwriter is one that has overlapped over the decades, many pondering who the real Nancy Drew was. Real living history in Toledo, OH, the perfect location for a large collection of thousands of Nancy Drew books and memorabilia that I’d collected for many years, donated to the Toledo Public Library in 2019.

How does one come to collect a voluminous collection surrounding Mystery’s IT Girl, Nancy Drew? To clue you in, it begins in childhood with a spooky mystery. A tale of woe. Dastardly villains. The hunt by intrepid sleuth Nancy Drew for answers. Foibles and baffling events segue to righting wrongs and saving the day and wrapping things up nicely at the end of the mystery with justice served and order restored. And then comes the teaser - the promise of another even more exciting adventure and more mysteries to solve soon. Those were the trappings of the many Nancy Drew books we devoured as kids and continue to as adults.

At some point we transition from childhood reader to adulthood. From fan to collector, revisiting our childhood days of getting lost in a good yarn to the exclusion of life and homework for something more exciting and present. It was a time to grow and learn and figure things out and with a pal like Nancy Drew, we were inspired with that can-do-anything attitude. As adults looking back, we get a thrill remembering the good times we had solving mysteries with Nancy. For collectors like myself, collecting is a way of reclaiming that nostalgia and holding onto it indefinitely.

After over 20 years of collecting since the late 1990s, I’d amassed over 4000 items and it had served a great purpose to me but was really destined for more. It wasn’t just what I collected, but the way I collected. To tell that story about Nancy Drew and those that created her. To put together a collection of the many puzzle pieces that make up the story behind Nancy Drew. To have something that fans and scholars can learn from and study. To inspire others to collect and revisit their childhood. To help solidify Nancy’s legacy as not only an entertaining sleuth but her empowerment of kids – and adults – to go out and conquer and never give up. It’s been more about bringing history alive and telling the stories behind the scenes, so they live on and inspire new generations. It’s about preserving Nancy Drew’s legacy as not only a phenomenal children’s book series but as Pop Culture icon who has inspired and challenged so many from kids on up to most of our ladies on the US Supreme Court. That a fictional character can resonate with so many for over 90 years and be such a driving force amongst fans of the series, is pretty amazing. These are the things that drove me in my collecting in addition to nostalgia. And it was the history behind the scenes and Nancy’s first ghostwriter, Benson, who drove me to research and write about that history and collect it as well.

With over 600 books published since 1930, there’s a lot out there to collect. You may wonder how one goes from 600 to a few thousand and you can find all the intriguing answers at the Toledo Public Library. But here’s a few things you can find when you sleuth there for more details - from the regular classic series to various spin-off series to series for older teens and younger kids there’s something for everyone and each new generation has had their Nancy Drew to aspire to. From the regular books and all the neat printing formats over the years to library editions, book club editions and even foreign editions, there’s a lot of books to be found at the library.

And then there’s the gamut of Nancy Drew collectibles related to books, movies and television. Always intriguing, there’s even ephemera ranging from historical documents to advertising items that help tell the story from concept to creation to marketing to distribution to the actual book or collectible. The history behind Nancy Drew is often as fascinating as Nancy Drew’s cases, sometimes even more dramatic and suspenseful. It’s what inspired me to go beyond collecting to researching and writing about Nancy Drew since 1997. Between collecting and writing, it led to consulting on a wide variety of merchandise, books and productions like the 2007 Nancy Drew movie which gave me the opportunity to acquire some unique things for the collection.

The classic Nancy Drew in cloche hats from the 1930s, to a 1950s Bobby-Soxer and then mod 1960s sleuth with her titian-haired flip meets modern Nancy Drew from the 1980s to present day, every decade reflecting that generation's style.  Shelves hold books filled with vintage and modern tales of a very daring and intelligent sleuth and there are many exciting tales to be had in Nancy Drew's world of lost wills, haunted houses, lost treasures, and musty old attics full of secrets and sinister suspects. There are also many stories to tell behind the scenes of Nancy Drew and her creators and writers like Benson and this collection can provide the clues to unravel all these mysteries - real and fictional.

So, when the Toledo Public Library reached out to me in 2019 during its renovation of the main library about donating my collection, I was thrilled at the opportunity to let Nancy Drew shine and let so many get to see the collection and learn and grow from it. They were able to carve out a space for it just perfect for Nancy Drew fans to visit in The Mystery Room. Located at the downtown main library in the children’s section, the collection has been seen by many fans making visits locally and from afar. There was even a marriage proposal to a Nancy Drew fan in the room.

The choice of Toledo for the donation is due in large part to Benson, having been a long-term resident and also having written some of the original Nancy Drew books there after moving from Cleveland where some of the earlier Nancy Drews were written. I’ve always been fascinated with the ghostwriters behind the pen name and Benson was in many ways a real-life Nancy Drew which inspired me to write about her life and legacy including an upcoming biography about her life that I’m currently writing. The library also has some very neat historical items in relation to Benson including one of each of the 135 books she published, photos, awards and even her NASA application to be a journalist in space. There’s a Literary Landmark dedicated to her writing career which hangs outside The Mystery Room that houses my collection. They also own the original Russell H. Tandy painting for the 1931 edition of volume #5, The Secret at Shadow Ranch.

The Toledo Public Library – any library for that matter – is a wonderful place. Libraries are a foundation for literacy, especially among those that can’t afford to read otherwise or have the kind of resources to open up the world of reading to them. It’s a place to lose yourself in adventures and learn about so much and grow as a person. It’s a place I loved to read Nancy Drew books as a kid – in my school library. And for some, libraries are a place to visit a collection like this and open up the world of Nancy Drew and her mysterious history. Benson wrote about libraries in her last published Toledo Blade column before she passed away in 2002. Benson often used the library to research for her books. She spent a lot of time at the Cleveland Public Library researching while writing Shadow Ranch,  among others and then later in Toledo at the Toledo Public Library. I love libraries and have such fond affection for them. Every year at our Nancy Drew Conventions we donate a full set of Nancy Drew books to the local library for people of all ages to enjoy, especially the new generation of kids. Once upon a time decades ago, and even some rare instances now, some people tried to keep Nancy Drew and similar series literature out of libraries. Libraries are all amazing and worthy of any donation such as my Nancy Drew collection, and I hope this inspires other collectors to consider donating their collections to their libraries. And that’s one reason why I felt like the Toledo Public Library would be a wonderful home for the collection in addition to Toledo’s historic connections to Nancy Drew.

21 years ago, members of the Nancy Drew Sleuths including myself visited Toledo and met with Benson at the Toledo Blade where she’d been working as a journalist for over 50 years. It was then that I became inspired with her back story and being a real-life Nancy Drew. Numerous research trips and Nancy Drew events have brought me to Toledo many times over the years, I even followed in Nancy Drew’s footsteps sleuthing around Benson’s old attic for clues. Having my collection there for the community and visitors to enjoy makes it feel like a second home.

Keeping history alive is a wonderful thing and the Toledo Public Library has been so supportive of that goal. Every generation has had their Nancy Drew - and they are all there at the library just waiting to be rediscovered and for young fans to discover and be inspired by. That’s the most rewarding thing to this longtime Nancy Drew Collector. 

Nancy Drew Fan Gathering & Collection Dedication - Toledo, OH July 2022

CALLING ALL NANCY DREW FANS! Join your fellow Nancy Drew fans and Sleuths in Toledo, OH in July (14th-16th) for the Nancy Drew Collection & Mystery Activities at the Toledo Public Library (TPL). E-mail sleuths@ndsleuths.com to be on the e-mail list and to RSVP for events! 

Schedule of Nancy Drew Events: 

Thurs. July 14 - Nancy Drew Fans Party at the TPL 6pm-8pm - Dedication of the Jennifer Fisher Nancy Drew Collection in the Mystery Room, charcuterie bar and goodies, escape room challenge, photo booth. On display is Jim McNamara's donation of UK art for The Mystery of the Tolling Bell. A special display on loan by collector Michael Gauwitz of the Russell H. Tandy Painting for The Mystery at the Moss-Covered Mansion plus Rudy Nappi paintings of The Message in the Hollow Oak, The Secret of the Wooden Lady and The Haunted Showboat. See the Tandy painting for The Secret at Shadow Ranch in the Mystery Room. And artist Laura Ruby's Nancy Drew series of prints donated to the collection will be on display around the library. You won't want to miss out on seeing this amazing array of books, collectibles and art!

Fri. July 15 - Nancy Drew Mystery Day at the Library - Nancy Drew scavenger hunt for prizes, sleuth kits to the first several hundred, strolling magician, CSI Sleuth activities from Imagination Station, photo booth. Special Nancy Drew art, collecting and history presentations from authors Jennifer Fisher and Julie Rubini and artist Laura Ruby whose prints will be part of the fun scavenger hunt.

Sat. July 16 - free time and scavenger style hunt involving Mildred Wirt Benson locations around Toledo w/ prizes awarded at the Nancy Drew Fans dinner that night.

The library boasts an amazing Children's floor with so many neat interactive elements, a gallery of original children's book cover art, a mystery wall to solve, the Nancy Drew collection in the Mystery Room, items on display throughout the library and in local History/Rare Book Room, a life-size diorama of Nancy Drew from the Tandy Secret of the Old Clock, and so much more! It's a children's book and Nancy Drew nostalgia playground for fans of all ages!