Today, I learned, for the first time in my life, that Carolyn Keene, the author behind Nancy Drew was actually a false person. The author doesn’t exist! Nancy Drew was written by a bunch of ghost writers. And not just Nancy Drew – probably the entire series of books of my growing up years aka Sweet Valley, Hardy Boys (though I don’t really read them).
Apparently, in the early 1900s, it was a popular scheme where publishers will hire freelance writers to write children book series for them – paying them off per work and removing their authorship rights. The Stratemeyer Syndicate was well noted for this kind of publishing scheme and it was their founder, Edward Stratemeyer who created the concept of Nancy Drew and assigned her to one of his ghost writers – Mildred Augustine Wert Benson who went on and wrote 23 of the first 30 Nancy Drew books. Benson eventually went on with her career to write other books under her name and pursue a gratifying career in journalism. It was only in her later years that it was revealed she was the original Carolyn Keene. Stratemeyer carefully guarded the identities of their writers to preserve the air of mystery around the authors.
But despite this shock – and how I feel like my entire childhood was a lie! – I still will say I love the Nancy Drew and the Sweet Valley series. These books became instrumental to my growing interest for books and my love for reading. I loved reading about the adventures of Nancy Drew that later on, I even embarked on a mission of collecting original prints – those that really look old. I would hunt for the copies in old bookstands along the market and won’t hesitate to buy one even if I’d read it just because I wanted to collect them.
Eventually I outgrew Nancy Drew and Sweet Valley but I never outgrew my love for reading. And I owe it to the brilliant authors – or ghost writers – behind these famous series.
