The Case of the Independent Women

13 THE CASE of the BY MELANIE REHAK INDEPENDENT WOMEN Nancy Drew, girl sleuth, continues n the spring of 1930, just as designed to delight. Of course, America was plunging deep there were also her soon-to- to be one of America’s most into the Depression, a brilliant, be-famous blue roadster, her beautiful, and, most impor- doting lawyer father, her popular literary characters. The tantly, intrepid young woman fashionable wardrobe, and appeared on the scene to her unerring sense of right reason? Her creators were two lighten young America’s load. and wrong to recommend Her name was Nancy Drew, her. But most of all, it was women who imbued her with and even the price of her her independent, enterprising mysterious adventures—fifty spirit that made her a hit their own trailblazing spirit. cents a book, an amount that from the very first moment could almost always be gotten she landed on bookshelves up even in hard times—was across the country. Over the course of her first I three stories, published simul- taneously as a “breeder set” to ensure immediate addiction among the ranks of her readers, Nancy investigated a missing will, saved a drowning swimmer, explored a haunted mansion (discovering a secret underground tunnel in the process), and restored a stolen fortune to its rightful owner. She was also locked up in a closet, knocked unconscious several times, and forced to escape by climbing down a prickly rose trellis in a skirt and heels. The Secret of the Old Clock, The Hidden Staircase, and The Bungalow Mystery introduced to America the bold sleuth who would become a mainstay of juvenile reading forever after. Even now, PRIVATE COLLECTION PRIVATE seventy-six years later, Nancy www.nysarchives.org 14 EVEN NOW, SEVENTY-SIX YEARS LATER, NANCY DREW REMAINS A SYMBOL OF SELF-RELIANCE, QUICK THINKING IN PERILOUS MOMENTS, AND MODISH INDEPENDENCE. PRIVATE COLLECTION COLLECTION PRIVATE which, it had become clear by The Women Behind the Man the time she made her debut, The secret of Nancy’s success made girls drop a series faster lies in the women behind this than a hot potato. Nancy Drew famous pseudonym. When Drew remains a was, above all, a modern sleuth Stratemeyer initiated the symbol of self-reliance, quick from the start. Nancy Drew Mystery Stories, thinking in perilous moments, All of this was according to he assigned them to a young and modish independence. plan. Her inventor was a series woman, Mildred Wirt, who “If I get through, I must book mogul named Edward was already writing his Ruth depend upon my own initia- Stratemeyer, who, thanks to Fielding books (needless to tive,” she tells herself during his unrivaled combination of say, Ruth fell by the wayside an especially harrowing entrepreneurial instincts and when Wirt got engaged to scene in The Bungalow imagination, was already a her long-time beau in the late Mystery. Trapped in a fero- millionaire when he envisioned 1920s). Wirt was a pithy, cious rainstorm and almost his blonde, blue-eyed detective. no-nonsense journalist from killed by a falling tree, she As head of the Stratemeyer Iowa, and she invested Nancy Syndicate, a company that PRIVATE COLLECTION COLLECTION PRIVATE never loses her cool, and her with a good deal of her own moxie and charm are as produced children’s series books gumption, not to mention her appealing today as they were by sending outlines to ghost- award-winning swimming in 1930. writers, each of whom wrote skills and relentless energy. under a series pen name, he A good thing, because a A Heroine Ahead of had dreamed up most of the mere twelve days after the Her Time major series of the previous first three books in the series How did this young detective decades, including Tom Swift were published, Edward manage to capture the imagi- (1910), the Bobbsey Twins Stratemeyer died suddenly of nation of American girls so (1904), and the Hardy Boys pneumonia. His final creation quickly and hold onto it (1927). It was when girls began was left in the hands of not through wars, television, social to write in about his boys’ only the feisty young ghost- upheaval, and the Internet? series, saying how much they writer he had hand-picked, For one thing, she did it by liked them—as well as how but his two daughters, being ahead of her time. She much they didn’t like the Edna Stratemeyer and Harriet was the first teenage detective “weepy and weak” girl charac- Stratemeyer Adams, who took of her kind, a girl who, instead ters in his boys’ books—that over their father’s company of moonlighting as a solver of he realized it was time to give when a buyer could not be mysteries while holding a day them an adventurer of their found. For Harriet, who had job as a traditionally feminine own. Stratemeyer imagined attended Wellesley in the years nurse or student, was able Nancy as “an up-to-date preceding suffrage, it was to devote herself fully to her American girl at her best, the opportunity of a lifetime own interests. She also did it bright, clever, resourceful and to have the career she had by never even broaching the full of energy,” and along desperately wanted but had subject of marriage and with her, he invented her been denied by her traditional motherhood—two topics author, Carolyn Keene. parents and upper-class NEW YORK archives • SPRING 2006 15 THE ARCHIVES CONNECTION The women who created and he research for Girl book’s narrative I drew sustained Nancy Drew operated TSleuth: Nancy Drew and heavily from its vast selection in a business world dominated the Women Who Created Her of correspondence between by men. (Harcourt, 2005), my book Harriet Stratemeyer Adams on which this article is based, and Mildred Wirt Benson, as was done in several archives. well as between Harriet and they tended to be those who Paramount among them was her editors. needed working-class jobs for the Stratemeyer Syndicate I also did research at the the money more than women records (1832–1984), University of Iowa Women’s of Harriet and Mildred’s back- housed in the Rare Books Archives, where I looked grounds. Harriet became a and Manuscripts Collection at the Mildred A. Wirt CEO by chance, and she often of the New York Public Benson Papers and other faced patronizing attitudes Library. This trove of 375 memorabilia donated to the from men in publishing who boxes details not only the collection by Iowa women. were not ready to accept her inner workings of the These archives were a fasci- in their midst; nevertheless, company, but the years nating source of information she pushed on. Mildred got before Edward Stratemeyer about the atmosphere on HARCOURT HARCOURT her lucky break in the way so founded it, when he was campus during Mildred’s upbringing. many women did. When the working as a dime novel years there in the 1920s and Though she was married and newsroom of the Toledo Times writer and editor. His early about the historic founding the mother of four young was emptied of reporters by writings are there, as well of the university’s Journalism children, she threw herself overseas deployments during as his literary account School, which she attended. into professional life with World War II, the paper hired books––which note, with I also used the Wellesley zeal. As editor, Harriet helped her with the promise that as fatherly pride, the arrival of College Archives and the to mold the Nancy Drew soon as the men were back, his firstborn child, Harriet, Beinecke Library at Yale, whom generations of little she’d be gone. Instead, she in December, 1892. Many which houses another girls have admired and stayed put for more than fifty of the illustrations in Girl small collection of papers aspired to, endowing her with years, proving herself time Sleuth came from this concerning the Stratemeyer the graciousness and poise and time again. collection, and for the Syndicate. that are as much a part of Harriet and Mildred’s letters her character as her uncanny to each other, and to their ability to sniff out a mystery. friends and colleagues in the Later on, when Mildred Wirt years when their children were the girl sleuth continually faces became a reporter at the young (Mildred had a daughter down conventional wisdom Toledo Times and left her in 1938), show the enormous to get to the bottom of a series-writing days behind, strains and challenges they conundrum, and like them Harriet took over the writing faced as working women, as she does it with elegance and of the Nancy Drew books, well as the intricate mecha- verve. These letters provide and left an even greater mark nisms that kept the Stratemeyer a fascinating window into on the famous sleuth. Syndicate and its roster of star the development of one of characters running smoothly— America’s most-loved pop On Their Own or sometimes not so icons, and also attest to the Both Harriet and Mildred defied smoothly—over the years. great character and innovative great odds when they became Without Harriet and Mildred’s spirit of the two women who career women in the early struggles in the real world, shaped her, without whom part of the twentieth century. Nancy’s fictional, sometimes the Nancy Drew we’ve known Though it was certainly not fantastical ones would not be and loved for so long would unheard of for women to work, nearly as vivid.

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