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

The Case of Mildred Wirt Benson’s Biggest Fan & Friend - Geoffrey S. Lapin

Geoff's article, The Ghost of Nancy Drew, published 1989, Books at Iowa 

It was at Baltimore’s Enoch Pratt Free Library in the 1960s that youngster Geoffrey S. Lapin found himself in the reference department. Shelves of bibliographies - many of them author bibliographies - tempted him. Curious about the authorship of his favorite series books like Nancy Drew, he found himself pulling volumes off the shelf, including the Cumulative Book Index and Durward Howes' American Women 1939-1940.

Intriguingly, inside the Cumulative Book Index, when he looked up Carolyn Keene, someone had left a penciled notation – see Mildred Augustine Wirt in the Durward Howes volume. While the identity of this mysterious pencil-inner is the stuff of legends, the finder of the notation, Geoff, would go onto be infamous in the Nancy Drew collecting world.

Geoff had just stumbled upon a rabbit hole of knowledge and down it he went. Grabbing the volume of the Durward Howes volume, he found Wirt listed and hordes of pen names among her own names from Wirt to Benson and began compiling a list of all the various books and series she wrote.

Then came the really fun part when he ventured out to a plethora of amazing used and antiquarian bookshops to find some treasures. Armed with bags full of the adventures of Penny Parker, Penny Nichols, Madge Sterling and many others, he set out to read them all.

And in vicariously enjoying the adventures of all of these series book heroes and heroines, he realized, not only was Wirt (now Benson) and amazing writer, but she was behind so many pseudonyms, and he now had an amazing list of over 130 books she’d written.

Several years later, he found himself on a bus to Toledo to visit Benson at the Toledo Blade, where she was working as a reporter. It was 1969, and Saturday Review had just recently published an issue with an article on The Stratemeyer Syndicate by Arthur Prager in which it stated that Harriet Adams had written books that Geoff knew Benson had written, thanks to all his sleuthing. Someone had to get to the bottom of this mystery!

Off the bus he went, headed to downtown Toledo to the Toledo Blade and he met Benson, the not-so-grandmotherly Carolyn Keene. More like a very ballsy blunt Carolyn Keene who lived a life of adventure and was an amazing writer and journalist. She took off her scarf and opened a drawer, and there sat that very issue of Saturday Review. Things were about to get very interesting!

From that point onward, Geoff became friends with Benson, championed her writing, researched and wrote numerous articles on her and other related Nancy Drew topics even meeting the family of Edward Stratemeyer. He even traveled by small plane to an island to interview Russell Tandy Jr., son of the first illustrator of the Nancy Drew books, Russell H. Tandy. He fired off letters to magazines and newspapers who ran articles with a more Syndicate slant, as if the ghost writers didn’t exist. He wanted to correct the record and felt Benson deserved credit for what she had done.

By the end of the 1970s and 1980, the publishers of Nancy Drew were headed to court, to battle over the copyright to Nancy Drew and publishing rights. Geoff was there, front and center to take in all the drama that ensued in Federal District Court in Manhattan, NY. He loves to quote Harriet Adams who looked at Benson on the day she arrived to testify and said, “I thought you were dead!”

The 1980s brought articles in publications like Yellowback Library and Geoff shared his knowledge and research with other collectors and fans. Then in 1993, the University of Iowa held a Nancy Drew Conference bringing over 500 fans and scholars to Iowa City, IA, where Benson had gotten her Bachelor’s in English and was the first person to get a Masters in Journalism in 1927. Geoff was there to support Benson who was to be honored with a distinguished alumni award among other fanfare.

After receiving worldwide recognition as Carolyn Keene, Geoff’s crusade to help Benson get recognition mostly complete, they settled into a comfortable friendship in the remaining years of her life with Thanksgiving visits and lots of letters between them over the years. When Benson passed away in May of 2002, that summer The Blade held a memorial for her at The Toledo Club. Geoff spoke to those in attendance about what an amazing woman, writer, and friend Benson was, even regaling the audience with amusing tales about her infamous driving exploits.

Geoff’s knowledge and research have been an amazing part of her legacy, and he’s built his own legacy over the years. He donated some wonderful items in the summer of 2025 to the Toledo Public Library including a 1930s Nancy Drew movie poster plus the contents of Benson's desk at the Toledo Blade when she passed as well as a Penny Parker outline, her first short story (The Courtesy) in a St. Nicholas bound volume, and other ephemera you can visit at the downtown branch. His papers and research will one day live in infamy at The University of Iowa, the Geoffrey S. Lapin Papers. where scholars and fans can learn more about his journey in helping to discover the identity behind the mysterious pseudonym Carolyn Keene. This is a legacy well-earned and deserved. Millie would be proud! 

Cupcakes celebrating Millie's 120th, Indianapolis 2025

Donate to the Nancy Drew Fund at Toledo Public Library to help acquire historical Nancy Drew documents and ephemera!

 

Donate to the Nancy Drew Fund at Toledo Public Library 

We have several collectors with Nancy Drew and Mildred Wirt Benson related historical documents and ephemera who are wanting to help the Toledo Public Library acquire these items for their Rare Book Room and archive of Nancy Drew and Benson memorabilia. It helps when the Nancy Drew community can come together to help fund items like this and get them into archives and be preserved and made available to scholars and academics for research. They gain new life being available to the public and to history!

Click here to donate online at the Toledo Public Library's website.

To donate by check, send checks payable to Library Legacy Fund (With "Nancy Drew Fund" written on the memo line!) to:

Library Legacy Foundation

The Nancy Drew Fund

325 Michigan Street

Toledo, OH 43604

Donations help the Jennifer Fisher Nancy Drew Collection grow and expand, and further the legacy of Nancy Drew's amazing history. Funds help purchase historic Nancy Drew and Mildred Wirt Benson ephemera to properly archive and keep Nancy Drew's history alive! Expansion of the collection and digitizing and archiving, special exhibitions and Nancy Drew Conferences are also furthered by donations to this fund. If Nancy Drew could do it, so can Nancy Drew fans! Thank you for all your support!

Nancy Drew & The Case of the Missing Copyrights

Nancy Drew & The Case of the Missing Copyrights 

Today, January 1^st, 2026 marks what some consider a milestone in the Nancy Drew world. This year many works that debuted back in 1930 in both print and film among other genres are going into the public domain. Some of you may wonder how this is possible and want to solve the mystery of what I somewhat cheekily refer to as these “missing” copyrights. Due to laws in previous decades, copyright extension for works like Nancy Drew was 95 years so when the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories series debuted on April 28, 1930, we’ve had to wait 95 years for the copyright on those texts to expire.

To clue you in, that means that the original twenty-five-chapter texts of the first four Nancy Drew books published in 1930 – The Secret of the Old Clock, The Hidden Staircase, The Bungalow Mystery, and The Mystery at Lilac Inn – can be reprinted or adapted without violating copyright law. No need to get permission or license these 1930 works. Created by Edward Stratemeyer, of The Stratemeyer Syndicate, these books were ghost-written by Mildred Wirt Benson who would go on to write twenty-three of the first thirty Nancy Drew books. I am currently writing a biography of Benson, a real life Nancy Drew. Stratemeyer created the outlines for these books and passed away just shy of two weeks after the series debuted. 1930 was a difficult year of many to come in the United States with the Great Depression, but Nancy Drew was said to be a great light in a dark time to girls growing up at that time period. She adventured, solved exciting mysteries, and saved the day – and in doing so inspired generations of fans to do more in their lives. She survived the depression years and was outselling the boys’ series by 1934.

Unfortunately, due to lack of knowledge or research, we’re likely to see a few Nancy Drew-style bumbling “crooks” who reprint the twenty-chapter revised text versions of these books, not realizing that DOES violate copyright law. Only the original texts of twenty-five chapters with 1930 copyright dates are public domain. These four books were revised in 1959 for the first 2, 1960 for book 3 and 1961 for book 4 – down to just twenty chapters – and these revisions are what is still in print by Penguin Random House who reprints the first fifty-six classic Nancy Drew books. Complications, though, are something one must ponder. After all, the revisions contain – with the exception of book 4 and to a degree book 2 – whole parts, paragraphs and sentences that were carried over into the revisions from the original versions. Does that complicate things further?

Besides text, there’s also the cover art and glossy internal illustrations created in 1930 by commercial illustrator, Russell H. Tandy. So, only the 1930 Tandy covers and illustrations for these first four books are in the public domain. If sometime tries to reprint second or third cover art or later internal illustrations, then they would be violating copyright law. Also keep in mind, around 1940, Tandy revised the frontispiece art for the books – so someone can’t use a 1940s frontispiece with a 1930 text – it’s not public domain yet.

Solving the mystery is quite simple – while the original 1930 versions in text and art are public domain now, the revised versions and later cover and internal art are not public domain.

Jennifer Jenkins, who writes and researches about the public domain and is director of The Center for the Study of Public Domain and a professor at Duke University School of Law along with James Boyle, a Duke law professor, published information on the public domain issues and what’s going into the public domain in 2026 at this link. There is also a neat blog entry at the Library of Congress.

Jenkins and Boyle have a very good explanation of why it’s important for works to go into the public domain, but they also explain the legalities of it. So, if you’re interested in the finer details of it all, this is a great read!

In the end, it probably doesn’t matter what any of us think about this issue – the law is the law. But I suppose the greater good is public domain in spirit and intention most of the time, but sometimes things get a little sinister. And there are consequences. Being in the public domain opens up these works to everyone for whatever purpose. One could also liken this to a “windfall” in which long lost heirs with little or no connection to someone or their property and livelihood get a windfall inheritance. Intriguingly, the first Nancy Drew book, Old Clock, deals with heirs, an inheritance and a missing will.

Since I have a connection to Nancy Drew – lifelong fan, reader, researcher, historian, author, collector, consultant, historical legacy donation to Toledo Public Library, etc. – I have over 30 years of experience in dealing with this series, its history and its fan base. You can’t buy, binge or cliff-note yourself into that kind of knowledge and understanding of all the facets of Nancy Drew and the fan community. Which is one reason I consult for publishers and companies licensing the brand who need real authentic info and facts plus data and stats. I understand why the public domain can be good and that’s keeping works alive that were published 95 years ago – so they won’t be lost to history, which is important. However, with Nancy Drew – she’s hardly lost to history. This character and various incarnations of her have been in print (and on TV and in movies) for 95 years and counting now. No one is forgetting about Nancy Drew! Of course, the original text versions of the first four books now going into public domain, have been officially out of print by the Nancy Drew publishers since the 1959-1961 timeframe. However, Applewood Books beginning in the early 1990s reprinted the first twenty-one Nancy Drew books. And there’s a plethora of vintage copies of these books one can find at used book stores, antique malls and easily on sites like eBay. There have been millions of these books sold over the last 95 years.

So, my issue with works like this becoming public domain – something out of my control – and which has nothing to do with that sometime feckless term “gatekeeping,” is all the ridiculous copies that will be reprinted by all sorts of “sellers” outside of established publishing houses, who are just trying to make a buck on this without anything inherently interesting about the reprints. Covers that lack authenticity or scenes created not in the book, or other covers still in copyright being used that don’t match the story – many likely created by AI are not interesting to me. Not having historical context for instance, means nothing that would be that interesting to warrant someone buying a newly reprinted copy. Why buy a modern reprint when one could simply buy a vintage copy for pretty cheap – five to 10 dollars, maybe more depending on format and collectability. Reading copies can always be had for cheap! I’d much rather buy a vintage version than a modern reprint that isn’t really interesting. Especially when a vintage version is less than a reprint’s cost. It’s more of a buyer’s market on eBay these days.  The Applewood reprints were sincerely done and the first ten had introductions by famous authors inspired by Nancy Drew. Ghostwriter Mildred Wirt Benson even wrote introductions to books 4 and 5.

On the other hand, paperback reprints are great for format collectors. The original four 1930 books came out with blue boards and dust jackets, never in paperback through the years, except for foreign editions. So, collecting paperback versions might be of interest to collectors because it is a new format to collect. However, as a collector, I’m still going to be very selective with any reprints I purchase. Like the Great Pumpkin, I will pass your reprint by if it doesn’t feel very sincere or authentic.

There will be exceptions to the mass market or print-on-demand reprints that will likely flood the market including those unfortunate copies using the still in print revised and under copyright texts or art of these books. Those exceptions that I will look forward to will be curated by publishers and those reprinting these works who care more about the books, the characters and preserving the history behind it who will strive to do a great job in preserving these texts. As a historian, preservation is an ultimate end goal.

I was asked to write an introduction to a leather-bound set of the first four books which will be out later in 2026 from Thunder Bay Press as part of its Canterbury Classics series. As I introduce these 1930 texts to new generations and nostalgic fans, I discuss Nancy Drew and her mysterious history behind the books and who created and ghostwrote these books. Not only is this preserving the works but it’s adding history and facts behind the creation and publication of the series going back to 1930 which adds enrichment to it. I’m all for preserving works – but I feel like it’s important to add value to that with historical context and historical stories which also lends authenticity to the reprints.

Also, noted Stratemeyer Syndicate researcher and writer, James Keeline, will be publishing a scholarly version of the first four Nancy Drew books with historical information in January 2026, so fans and scholars can look forward to historical authenticity and preservation with this neat four-in-one edition! It will be published through his 24 Palmer Street Press at Lulu.com. He's also written a post at his blog on the public domain of Nancy Drew.

There’s also the use of the characters from these four books for adaptations and what some “creatives” or what I have often referred to rather sarcastically as the “Hollywood Phantom Menace” might do to the books and characters. Sex, drugs, dysfunction and horror films come to mind. Clearly, something never intended to touch these children’s book characters and definitely going against the mantra of the Stratemeyer Syndicate who created Nancy Drew and managed her for decades – that they be “safe and sane” books plus entertaining and a takeaway from the drudgery of real life. The easiest thing for fans whose sensibilities are offended, is to just not support content that doesn’t deserve support. The power of the purse!

I have to roll my eyes about all those dreaded “in name only” projects which might come forth where some popular genre or meme popular today has Nancy Drew thrust into it, her name slapped on an unrecognizable character and in situations that really have nothing to do with the detective genre she comes from, and the real mystery is why? If it’s going to be so different as to be “name only,” I just find this rather crass, over commercialized and boring. However, remember, the character is still under copyright and trademarked in the over 600 books that have been published since 1930 which are not entering the public domain versus the four that are. So, using a character like Nancy Drew is limited to the storylines they appear in in these first four books. You can’t just make anything Nancy Drew and get away with it, you “meddling kids.” Hopefully publisher and copyright owner Simon & Schuster will micromanage all the potential copyright violations to come out of this public domain issue as we see a lot of original versions over the next several decades going into public domain. There is one other outlier, however. Book 38 from 1961, The Mystery of the Fire Dragon –is public domain and has been for some time. Also, the 1961 revisions published that year - The Mystery at Lilac Inn and The Secret of Red Gate Farm. The reason? The copyrights were never renewed, a rather odd oversight for such a popular property.

If you are unfamiliar with what a 1930 public domain Nancy Drew book looks like, I’ve pictured the four cover art here by Tandy and noted that the texts have twenty-five chapters and 1930 copyrights, but you can learn a lot more about this and more at my Nancy Drew Sleuth Unofficial website –www.nancydrewsleuth.com. At my website you can also learn about my donation of my extensive over 5000 piece Nancy Drew Collection to the Toledo Public Library in Toledo, OH in 2019. This donation of books, collectibles and historic ephemera has created an amazing legacy for scholars, researchers, and fans of the books, including today’s generation of Nancy Drew readers. You can visit the collection and see all the Nancys that have been in existence from 1930 to present day. It’s donations like mine that add a lot of value to the history of such an important series upon the popular culture – and which has inspired a lot of women to do more in their lives. And there’s a wonderful Nancy Drew Fund that has been set up by the Toledo Public Library to support the collection and acquisitions of historical ephemera to it to further keep Nancy Drew’s mysterious history alive. Please consider donating to the Nancy Drew Fund to support the enduring legacy of Nancy Drew. And if you have historical Nancy Drew ephemera, consider donating it or selling it to the library to preserve this legacy for generations to come. 

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!

The Mildred Wirt Benson Historical Artifacts Recovery Project

THE CASE OF THE HISTORICAL NANCY DREW COLLECTION DUMPED IN A DUMPSTER...OR THE SAD REALITY OF COLLECTING WHEN YOU PASS ON. 

DO YOU OWN MILDRED WIRT BENSON DOCUMENTS AND PAPERS? – Yes, quite a few of you do! The story about the dumpster – it just happened! Read on for more clues and my contact info below to get in touch with me about what you have.

It’s time to consider donating or selling your historical items and ephemera related to Nancy Drew, series books and Mildred Wirt Benson to archives where they can be properly preserved and properly archived – not only for their survival but also to preserve history. An important history that you clearly are interested in since you own these items. At the very least, make copies of what you have and donate those for now – it would be a very simple and easy and very inexpensive gesture to preserve the contents of these items if you’re on the fence about donating and sharing. At least then we’d have a record of the document(s) if you made copies. Donating the actual items themselves isn’t always easy but it’s very rewarding. After all, I donated an over 5000+ piece Nancy Drew collection that meant a lot to me to the Toledo Public Library, but now it means a lot to the world. There’s great value in donating and being altruistic. However, in the alternative, there are institutions who would pay to have items and people like me who will pay to get items to donate for the greater good to an archive. Because it is that important and does mean that much.

Recent fires in CA where so many historical papers of many and collectible items and art were lost should be a wake-up call. A natural disaster can hit at any time, without any warning, sadly. And there are a lot of collectors in and around where these fires have been happening.

I consider those fires a big wakeup call and then the dumpster happened! I have been percolating on doing something for a few years now and I’ve created The Mildred Wirt Benson Historical Artifacts Recovery Project to help get documents and artifacts to archives. 

Today’s unfortunate bombshell, that that in recent weeks a collector’s passing led to wholescale dumping of items and historical items – Mildred Wirt Benson papers and documents – now lost to history – should also be a huge wake-up call. I can’t tell you how distressed, as a historian, I am over this wave of bitter news. I am being very serious here in my post in trying to help some of you understand why this is important to the series book community at large and the history of children’s publishing. You may love what you covet and hold dear, but most likely someday no one else will regardless of what they promise you now and I’ll note some examples of that.

For a moment, if you could picture your collection or historical documents in a dumpster or burned up in a fire or tossed in a recycle bin, is that an acceptable outcome to you? I hope it is not, and that you will begin to think about what you have and what you should be doing with it as a good steward of series book history in having originally purchased these items. If you can’t bear to part with anything now, please make copies and donate those and please consider a donation agreement taken care of and signed now this year in honor of the 95th anniversary of Nancy Drew, 120th anniversary of Mildred Wirt Benson, with an institution so that once you have an estate someday, these items can go to a good home – having a signed donation agreement is imperative. It’s your responsibility to deal with these important items, not your heirs. And if you don’t have a will, a liquidation company will come in as was done recently and just dump everything. They don’t care. But I do! And I hope that some of you care as well. If you can’t see yourself donating and must recoup some value having purchased these items, I’m working to establish a fund to help recover documents, so if there’s a will, there’s a way.

As to delaying donation or selling until later, however, keep in mind, that this collector that recently passed had planned – for quite some time – to sell or do something with that they had and that never happened. Time, nature and other disasters don’t care about our feelings nor history. Also, another collector who passed away in the 2000s had plans for their collection and donations and the admin/executor did what they wanted with the items instead, so there’s no 100% guarantee that anything you wish to happen once you’re not around to facilitate it, will actually happen. It’s much better to handle it while you are still with us in order for your wishes to be fulfilled. Another collector around a decade ago had plans among several collectors to have their collection given to them, but again, once they passed away, nothing happened as planned. This is rather typical of estates and executors unfortunately, especially when the state gets involved and there is no will. When Mildred’s daughter died – without a will – the state had to step in and deal with it and find heirs – quite a few people with little or no association got a “windfall” and some was sold in a public auction back in 2013 that some of us attended, but some historical items may not have fared well. 

Here’s the important info to clue you all in – there are proper places to donate with existing archives including the University of Iowa: The Iowa Women’s Archive – which has a large collection of Mildred Wirt Benson’s papers and other historical items. Also, the Toledo Public Library – Rare Book Room at the downtown branch – has historical documents and items related to Mildred Wirt Benson housed in their Rare Book Room archive. These are the two big locations for MWB related materials. These archives are where my archive of original documents and papers are headed.  

There are collectors from around the 1980s and 1990s when in a series of interesting transactions (made even more intriguing by reading behind the scenes letters in regard to this process) some of Mildred Wirt Benson’s papers and effects were sold to collectors through certain people and Yellowback Library. It’s time we start to get these documents (or copies of them) back to where they should go, to one of those archives.  I know quite a few of you who purchased items and will be contacting you personally as well in due time. But there are some who are not known amongst us here or some people that some of you know who are not on Facebook and I’d ask you to reach out to these collectors and get them in touch with me if you know anyone with documents. That would be most appreciated not just by me, but the series book community at large.

I am currently helping several collectors get their historical items into these archives and it’s been very rewarding to help facilitate that. Not only for me but for the collectors who are relieved to be able to do something with what they have had for decades, sitting in bins or in file boxes, waiting to find a proper place and use.

I can be of help in getting you in touch with these archives and facilitating donations now or donations later. Or selling options. Please take what I’m posting to heart and consider the future of the items you have and what it would mean to the community and the preservation of the history behind all these books we love and hold dear to our hearts for future generations so that their legacy lives on. You can get in touch with me at jennatlaw@aol.com or send copies (or originals) for me to get to these archive institutions at my PO box – Jennifer Fisher, P.O. Box 511, Higley, AZ, 85236. If you wish to send something anonymously, feel free.

As Indiana Jones once said, it belongs in a museum! Or, archive, as Indiana "Drew" might say.

The Colorful Variations of the Madge Sterling Series Covers

The three-volume breeder set of the Madge Sterling series written by Ann Wirt, a pseudonym for Mildred Wirt Benson, has always been a neat series. It was a three-volume set featuring the following stories: The Missing Formula, The Deserted Yacht, and The Secret of the Sundial. Madge Sterling tried to take on Nancy Drew during the depression – though the series never went anywhere past the first three volumes. I wrote an article about Madge Sterling and Nancy Drew this past April at my Nancy Drew Blog in which I revealed a lot more behind the scenes of the Stratemeyer Syndicate and Mildred Wirt Benson when Benson declined to write any further Nancy Drew books during the Great Depression. It was quite a story, supported by the letters between Benson and the Syndicate during that time, located in the New York Public Library’s Stratemeyer Syndicate archive.

In writing this article, I had pulled my set of Madge Sterling books off the shelf to peruse and in looking at the condition, sought upgrades at eBay, a site where collectors frequent and can find most anything on any given day. In doing so, I noticed some dust jacket art variants in the series. All three books originally came out with much darker and almost autumnal colors in the cover art and lettering on the covers. At some point, the art on the covers changed with the coloring varying in places and even titles changing color.

I realized that two of my books were printed circa the mid-1930s and the other was from the early printing years of Madge Sterling. So naturally the collector in me had to investigate the color changes I was seeing in my books verses the ones I was seeing on eBay. I made three purchases, so I’d have the full set of six showing the variants. I took photos of the earlier printings together and then the later printings together. Then I took photos of each book with the earlier printing on the left and the later one on the right for each volume. 

The first image at the top of this blog shows how they were originally published. All three had orange lettering for the titles and the author’s name on the covers. All three had much darker and even spookier coloring in the background, foliage, and sky. The clothing also had variations in color. 

The image right above, shows how the covers were published in later printings – the lettering on Missing Formula and Sundial were more of a red color and curiously the lettering on Deserted Yacht was black. I know that these are later printings because on the back of the books, some of the titles listed were not published until 1935. The earlier printed books as published featured Madge Sterling and Girl Flyers titles on flaps and on back, all published in 1932.

Comparing the covers side by side, for Missing Formula, the earlier book has a lot more orange in clothing and canoe – Jack French’s shirt, Madge’s scarf and the canoe are orange. On the later printing, they were red. The foliage is a much darker color in shades of blues, in the later printing it’s more of a bright green color and the foliage is a lot lighter looking. The former reminds me of a more fall scene and the latter a spring or summer scene.

Deserted Yacht also features orange more prominently than the later printing, and darker colors in the water. Even Madge’s hair looks black and the shore in the back is bluer. In the later printing the water is brighter and blue, the shore in the background green and a lot of accent colors and the boat are red instead of orange. Madge’s hair is brown. Her shirt is blue in the earlier version, green in the later, the jacket also has different shades on each cover.  

Sundial shows a much spookier set of foliage and trees – dark in blues, greys and blacks. In the later printing it’s light blue and green and brighter. Madge is sporting that orange scarf in the earlier printing and it’s red in the later printing. Her hair is a little lighter in the later printing. The oar has stripes that are orange in the earlier, red in the later.

Overall, the use of orange and darker foliage is a signature for the earlier printings. The later printings feature red more prominently and much lighter foliage and brighter settings.

The spines of the books in the earlier printings are much darker while the later printings are very light in color.

The book boards in the earlier printings run the gamut of blue to maroon in color in my set. The books in the later printings are a brighter red. I’ve also seen books on eBay without their dust jackets in colors ranging from red to maroon to brown, grey, blue, yellow and green. Goldsmith didn’t stick with any singular color palette, clearly. 

The Madge Sterling books were illustrated by Frances Rigney. I’m not sure if the art department at Goldsmith went in and changed the coloring on these covers or if Rigney recolored them at some point. Why Goldsmith changed the coloring in later printings, is an interesting question to ponder. Perhaps they wanted them to be brighter and a little more colorful and not so dark in order to entice readers. It is also possible the cover art was done more as line drawings and then filled in with color by the art department. If so, that could explain the ease with changing all the colors around. Whatever the reason for the changes, this will likely be a mystery that even Madge Sterling - or even Nancy Drew herself, never solved, but it’s fun to speculate and even more fun to be on the hunt to collect these fun variants.

Calling All Girls - Mystery at the Lookout by Carolyn Keene - Mildred Wirt Benson

Calling All Sleuths! Who doesn’t know about Carolyn Keene, the pseudonym for the popular Nancy Drew Mystery Stories series and also used on the Dana Girls Mystery Stories? But are you familiar with this pseudonym being used for a serialization of a novelette called, Mystery at the Lookout?

Let me clue you in! Calling All Girls magazine was a popular magazine for girls published by Parents’ Magazine. It debuted in 1941 and by 1950 was renamed “Senior Prom” magazine. By the mid-50s it was back to being called Calling All Girls and then in the mid-1960s it became “Young Miss.” One of Nancy Drew’s ghostwriters from the Nancy Drew Files era, Susan Wittig Albert, got the chance to write for Calling All Girls. In regard to writing for Calling All Girls, she reminisced, “I think fondly of Calling All Girls, where a kind editor guided me through the mysteries of story-telling and helped me believe in myself as a writer—a full 60 years ago!” This was in 1964 and she wrote a story titled, “The Art of Christmas.”

However, coincidentally, two decades before, there was another infamous Carolyn Keene who blazed the trail with Nancy Drew in 1930 and beyond, who wrote for Calling All Girls in 1942. Mildred Wirt Benson, writing a story under the pen name of Carolyn Keene, was hired to write, Mystery at the Lookout to be serialized over six issues. Judy Bolton’s Margaret Sutton also serialized 3 stories, the first of which was The Haunted Apartment that ran after Lookout. 

How did Mildred come to write this story? It all began with a January 23, 1942 letter from New York City to East Orange, NJ from The Parents’ Magazine Press, Inc. to a “Miss Keene.” It began, “I suppose you are familiar with our magazine, Calling All Girls, which I am sending copies under separate cover.” A popular magazine in just its first year, it was going to transition into a monthly zine and they wanted to start running serials. “We very much want a bang-up mystery story and after a great deal of consultation here and there, have come to the conclusion that you are the best person to write one for us.” They wondered if perhaps “Miss Keene” might have a manuscript they could tailor to a serial format or if not, some ideas “crying to be put on paper.”

Frances Ullman, managing editor of Calling All Girls, even offered to take “Miss Keene” to lunch. Little did she know, that might not be very easy to do, what with the real “Miss Keene,” Mildred, living in Toledo, Ohio at the time.

Unfortunately, it’s a case of the missing letters in the New York Public Library’s Stratemeyer Syndicate archives! A reply to Frances is not among the letters there as well as a reply from Frances – so we pick up with a letter from Edna to Ullman. Based on this letter, it would appear that in the missing letters, Ullman must have referred to the first few Nancy Drew books or perhaps the characters as “florid and old-fashioned.” A February 10, 1942 reply from Edna C. Squier to Ullman suggested Ullman take a look at some of the Nancy Drew stories to see if her impression of the style appears “florid and old-fashioned.” She also referenced middle-aged and elderly characters. I’m guessing that Ullman may have taken issue with the first two books which feature middle-aged and elderly characters. Apparently, Ullman wanted the story told in a “schoolgirl manner.” The character for the story was chosen by Ullman to be fourteen years old.

Edna followed up with a February 19, 1942 letter to Ullman and she referenced four story ideas. The first was “The Mysterious Message” or “The Mystery at the Well.” This story had to do with a missing baby, an inheritance, and oil money. A second was “The Mystery of Stone Mount” or “The Mystery of Natchee Camp.” This story idea took place around a girls’ camp and strange goings on around the camp having to do with unpatriotic hoarders. In the third suggestion, “A Motorboat Mystery,” a girl is kidnapped being mistaken for a movie star. Finally, there was “Mystery at the Lookout” featuring a mystery involving a lookout, a strange woman in the woods, a note in code, and a spy.  This latter story interested Calling All Girls the most, so this idea was adapted for the serial.

Edna wrote to Mildred on March 4, 1942, asking her if she could write a “novelette” of about 15,000 words, to run in six installments in “a small magazine for girls.” She noted, “The editor wishes the characters to be more youthful and sprightly than those in the Nancy Drew and the Dana Girls books” because the heroine will be fourteen.

Mildred was excited by this offer and wrote back to Edna on March 6, 1942 and mentioned her short story writing, “In years past I did considerable magazine work and enjoyed it.” She asks about compensation “because the usual magazine serial requires far more work and rewriting in proportion to its length than a book.” She also requested a copy of the girls’ magazine to get an idea of its style.

1942 was the year that Edna moved off to Florida, so it fell on Harriet to take over the managing of this serial. Harriet writes to Mildred on March 10, 1942 and makes the financial offer for the six installments of 2500 words each and notes, “The amount we offer for the writing of this is not in proportion to a full book-length story, since we feel it will mean more concentrated attention on your part and are offering a sum of $75.00.”

Harriet referenced Mildred’s magazine work and gave her pointers from the Calling All Girls editor – “It is to have a modern, up-to-date swing to it, with dashes of humor here and there, such as young people of fourteen use. Be sure to omit long words, involved sentences, and adult ideas. The readers of this magazine are about 8 to 10 years old.” Because of World War II, Harriet was sure to mention a trend to avoid anything related such as “the war, sabotage, and similar subjects.” The Syndicate wanted each installment to “end with an excellent holding point.”

Mildred responded on March 14, 1942 and found the $75 “quite satisfactory.” By March 18, 1942, Mildred had the first installment written and sent it and a letter to Harriet noting she used “a moderate amount of slang” because “CALLING ALL GIRLS seems to favor it, as do most publications.” She had some issues with compressing the plot into such limited space and still keeping it detailed.

Harriet enthusiastically responds on March 20, 1942 and she felt that Mildred “caught the spirit of the story and the type of writing which the magazine likes.” She cautioned Mildred about using “hackneyed expressions.” She also requested that Mildred not make any “good character” tell untruths. Also, that the main character Sally not be “forgetful” – to let some other character be that way.

By April 1, 1942, Mildred had completed the entire serialization. Mildred had misinterpreted the word “lookout” and didn’t realize it meant observation point, so she had to fix that in some of the installments. She explained to Harriet that she fixed the forgetfulness issue in regard to Sally, and only used that angle because she thought it made Sally “a more human character.”

Mildred had a hard time including a large amount of "bright" conversation because there were so many characters and information in the outline. She had to work around that and had to be careful to not “give the story a hurried sound.” For the final installment she included two endings and felt the longer one was the best. We’ll never know for sure which ending – the shorter or the longer – was used, but the final version turned out very good.

Harriet wrote to Mildred on April 21, 1942 to thank her “for turning in such a good yarn” and timely. Harriet mentioned that there were very minor corrections made. Also, Harriet had a “favorable report from New York” from Calling All Girls. The first installment was to appear in the July 1942 issue. A release and check were sent with this letter to Mildred.

Mildred wrote to Harriet on May 1, 1942 to thank her for the check and was glad to hear that Calling All Girls liked the story.

By July 16, 1942, Harriet wrote to Mildred about the July issue of Calling All Girls – they only got one copy, so she hadn’t sent one to Mildred yet. She also noted, that if Mildred kept a carbon copy of the manuscript, “you will notice that a few changes were made in line with suggestions from the editor, but these were minor, and the story turned out very well. I wish that some of the sprightly conversation and the quick-moving phraseology might be initiated in this forthcoming Nancy.” She was referring to the next Nancy Drew Mildred was to write, The Clue in the Jewel Box.

On July 19, 1942 Mildred wrote to Harriet that she hadn’t seen a copy of Calling All Girls but would obtain one soon. She noted, “The quick-moving phraseology was the result of considerable re-writing and the story required very nearly as much time as a complete book. Consequently, I do not feel that I can afford to do such concentrated work on every assignment. However, I endeavor always to give good quality writing, well above the average of competing series.”

In a September 2^nd, 1942 letter to Mildred from Harriet, Harriet praised Mildred’s work on Jewel Box, and said it was the best story she had turned in to the Syndicate, “with the exception possibly of the Calling All Girls manuscript.”

There seems to be some discrepancy about the date of when the serial started – in letters between the Syndicate and Mildred, it was supposed to start with the July 1942 issue and Harriet refers to having the July issue when it came out. However, it actually began in the August 1942 issue. That particular issue has lettering across the top of the cover stating, “Beginning MYSTERY AT THE LOOKOUT …a new serial by the author of the NANCY DREW and DANA GIRLS Mysteries.”

I’ve slowly added the six issues of Calling All Girls to my collection. Last year I purchased the final issue I needed to complete the set of six. I also found two advertisements on eBay promoting the magazine. One proclaimed, “There’s no better way to spend a dollar than to make a child happy.” The ad points out that Calling All Girls is exclusive to girls. Issues were to have “wholesome fiction” and colorful comics about “outstanding women” like Eleanor Roosevelt. Practical and entertaining articles on a range of topics for girls. Issues were 10 cents a copy or a full year at one dollar. Another ad asks, “Is your daughter getting ‘Girl-Conscious?’” It touts “excellent fiction by well-known authors” and asks parents, “Has your little girl reached the stage of being interested in her clothes and her looks, and wanting to read girl stories…especially mysteries and those that have a touch of romance? Then she’s ready for her very own magazine!”

A brief synopsis of Lookout will clue you into the mystery. The plot revolved around Sally Seymour and her pals Sandra Blake and Barbara Moore. It begins with Sally wishing they owned a mountain cabin for weekend outings. Sally has left behind a pair of binoculars at a lookout while on a picnic on Whiteface Mountain. They are informed by a trooper that there’s a wanted robber in the area and they have also found a coded message which they turn over to the trooper. Sally copies it first, so she can work on it later. They get lost and come up on a cabin with an old woman whose name is Millie Lear. They investigate in the woods, shenanigans befall them – like Sally’s friends falling in a pit. Then they find a notebook with a list of businesses and dates in it – possible robbery locations? More importantly, the notebook has the key to the code Sally found. She sees a strange airplane. With the help of the trooper who has the message with him, they decode it. They use a ruse to try and trap the robber by returning a decoy substitute notebook to the lookout. Millie seems to be involved but disappears. A search of her place turns up a valuable pearl which Sally takes home for safekeeping but the villain breaks in to her house. Lots of intrigue goes down – I won’t spoil that for you, but they end up saving Millie and helping her out and all the crooks of course, get rounded up in the end. And a reward is given that is fitting. It reads much like a Nancy Drew or Dana Girls book in spirit, perhaps even a bit like one of Mildred’s Penny Parker mysteries.

Mildred made full use of cliffhangers ending each installment to excite the reader for the next issue. There’s a lot of action and events and characters in this serial – it’s jam packed. You can see with word limitations and space that it would be hard to flesh this out like a full-length book and dialogue was probably sacrificed as Mildred noted in the letters to the Syndicate. I think this could have made for an interesting book, had the Syndicate ever decided to expand it. Fans of Nancy Drew and Mildred Wirt Benson should add these six issues to your collections. They are not easy to find however, though at times they pop up on eBay. For those who want to read the entire thing, the University of Iowa has digitized it as part of the Mildred Wirt Benson archive in the Iowa Women’s Archive, and you can read it at their website.

Lookout is a fine tale full of suspense and adventure. It was a great opportunity for Mildred to showcase her talent as a very prolific former short story writer and as a master of the juvenile mystery series book writing style combining both talents into this neat serialization. It was short story writing that first got Mildred into writing and started off her decades long writing career so it’s fitting that we honor her birthday with this post today.

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IMAGES: Click on the images in this blog to see larger images.

Bibliography:

Susan Wittig Albert’s website, personal essay - https://susanalbert.com/calling-all-girls-the-power-of-story

University of Iowa Digital Library – Calling All Girls – all 6 installments digitized - https://digital.lib.uiowa.edu/islandora/object/ui:mwb_2102

James Keeline, personal archive of Stratemeyer Syndicate research

September/October 2013 issue of The Sleuth – Mystery at the Lookout by Lorraine Rogers.

Calling All Girls – 6 issues Volumes 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, and 14 – August 1942, September 1942, October 1942, November 1942, December 1942, January 1943.

New York Public Library – Stratemeyer Syndicate Archive – Letters:

MAW=Mildred A. Wirt, ECS=Edna Camilla Squier, HSA=Harriet Stratemeyer Adams

3-4-42 – ECS TO MAW

3-6-42 – MAW to ECS

3-10-42 – HSA to MAW

3-14-42 – MAW to HSA

3-18-42 – MAW to HSA

3-20-42 – HSA to MAW

4-1-42 – MAW to HSA

4-17-42 – MAW to HSA

4-21-42 – HSA to MAW

5-1-42 – MAW to HSA

7-16-42 – HSA to MAW

7-19-42 – MAW to HSA

9-2-42 - HSA to MAW