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The very first Claire’s Day was held on May 18, 2002, in my town of Maumee, Ohio. I invited Millie, who had lived in neighboring Toledo for many years, to join us as a special guest for the day. I missed her reply phone call. Her sweet, feeble voice on my answering machine, offering her condolences, her admiration for our tribute, and her regrets in not being able to attend due to her failing health, remained with me. She died ten days later.
I did not realize that the Nancy Drew mystery stories that I grew up on were not Millie’s original works. They were versions revised in 1959.
However, Millie was the original writer of the series. All of the many characterizations of Nancy that followed stemmed from the independent, feisty sleuth molded by Millie.
As I have lived all my life in northwest Ohio, I have known for some time of Millie’s instrumental role with the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories. I also knew of her many years as a journalist, and enjoyed reading her various features and columns.
But there was so much of Millie’s life that was a mystery to me before I was given this opportunity to research and relay her life story. Her life was filled with adventure and challenges fueled by her indomitable spirit. I came to realize that the person who should be admired for her fierce independence, spirit, and spunk is not Nancy Drew.
It’s Millie.
MISSING MILLIE BENSON
THE FIRST CLUE
GHOSTWRITER REAPPEARS
The Case of the Missing Ghostwriter
FOR THE first fifty years of the series, readers of the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories, whether of the originals with the dusty blue cloth covers or the newer books with the bright yellow spines, knew that all those mysteries were written by Carolyn Keene. But who was she? No one had ever met this talented writer, seen a photograph of her face, or heard her voice on the radio. How could one of the most famous and beloved authors of suspenseful books for young people be such a mysterious figure herself?
This is where the plot thickens.
There is no Carolyn Keene. There never was.
BUT, like the adventurous girl detective Nancy Drew, the original writer of the series was always ready to take her readers on an exciting ride. And on May 27, 1980, she did just that—up the steps and into a courtroom of the United States District Court in Manhattan, and into the pages of a real life mystery to be solved as a result of a court trial.
THE FIRST BOOK IN THE NANCY DREW MYSTERY STORIES, THE SECRET OF THE OLD CLOCK, 1930
The Secret of the Old Clock, Carolyn Keene, Grosset & Dunlap. Permission granted by Penguin Group (USA) LLC.
It was a complicated trial. It involved two publishers, the businesses that print books and make them available to readers.
Both companies were fighting over the rights to publish future Nancy Drew Mystery Stories. At the end of this trial, one of the companies would win those rights; the other company would lose.
One publisher, Grosset & Dunlap, was trying to convince the judge that it should be allowed to publish new Nancy Drew Mystery Stories. That company had been making Nancy Drew’s adventures available to readers since their beginning in 1930, but it had recently lost the right to publish new ones.
The other publisher, Simon & Schuster, had been chosen by the Stratemeyer Syndicate*, the creator of the series, to publish those new Nancy Drew books. Simon & Schuster wanted the judge to decide that its company should retain the right to do so.
The Stratemeyer Syndicate was a book packaging business. The company matched writers up with books it was creating. Just as a newspaper assigns stories to writers, the Syndicate did with books. Once a writer had finished a story, the Syndicate would send the completed manuscript to a publisher. The publisher then printed the books and sold them to readers.
The Stratemeyer Syndicate and the publisher Grosset & Dunlap had been working together for almost seventy years. Then the two had parted ways over an issue they did not agree on. Grosset & Dunlap paid an amount of money, a royalty, to the Syndicate for every book purchased that the Syndicate had created. This meant for every Nancy Drew book that a young reader bought Grosset & Dunlap paid money to the Stratemeyer Syndicate.
Because the Nancy Drew books had always been popular, when their sales started to decline, the Syndicate blamed the publisher. Grosset & Dunlap, it felt, was not doing a good job promoting the books. Grosset & Dunlap disagreed.1 So the Syndicate signed a contract with another publisher, Simon & Schuster.
Because Grosset & Dunlap was not happy with the Stratemeyer Syndicate’s choice to use another publisher for the Nancy Drew books, the company filed a lawsuit to get those rights back. To strengthen its case, Grosset & Dunlap brought in a special witness.
That move revealed the trial’s true mystery—who was the original writer of the series? That special witness. The former ghostwriter.
TEMPERATURES had been quite hot in New York City for the days leading up to the trial. Yet the key witness was as cool as she could be in her powder blue pantsuit.
She was a small woman in her seventies, barely five feet tall, with short, graying hair that reflected her age. Steely eyes with a hint of whimsy peered through her round glasses, which sat firmly on her prominent nose. Her small mouth turned up at the corners, as if she were holding on to a secret.
She was.
As she walked up the many stairs of the courthouse that day, perhaps the witness was thinking about how the secret that very few people knew was about to come out. Maybe she was thinking about the late Edward Stratemeyer, who had formed the Stratemeyer Syndicate in 1905.2 Mr. Stratemeyer had asked her to write the first three Nancy Drew books after creating an outline, a writing guide, for her.
Maybe she was thinking that someone else was getting credit for her writing and she was ready to speak out about it.
The witness may have been thinking about many years before, when, as a young writer just out of college, she wrote her first Nancy Drew book. She had been happy to accept the flat fee, or one-time payment, for each book that she wrote for Mr. Stratemeyer even if it meant that her real name wouldn’t appear on the book cover. Writing for the Stratemeyer Syndicate might open other doors for her, she might have thought.
Now, fifty years later, this former ghostwriter for the Stratemeyer Syndicate was to serve as a witness for this important trial.
The witness entered the courtroom. As she was still very active, despite her senior citizen status, the long walk up the aisle didn’t bother her one bit. What probably caused her more concern were the questions that she would be asked. The expectation was that she would not be able to prove that she was the original writer of the Nancy Drew series, known only as Carolyn Keene.
Once her secret came out, her life could change.
EDWARD Stratemeyer had developed his plan for making books based on his own experiences as a ghostwriter for a publisher of story papers. Like his previous employer, Edward created the characters and the plot. He then developed an outline, and relied upon one of a variety of writers to pen each story. Several writers could be working on the same series, but none of them would ever be known as the author.
As a ghostwriter, Edward wrote stories using different names. These names are called pseudonyms. So, Edward created pseudonyms for the various series that he began to develop. One of these was the pseudonym of Carolyn Keene for the writers of the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories.3
Edward died on May 10, 1930, just twelve days after the first three books in the