Gail Crowe read her paper on “The Mystery Behind Nancy Drew.”

The Fredonia Shakespeare Club met at Barlow’s Mill in Fredonia, with president Sharon Klug presiding.

After a short business meeting, Gail Crowe read her paper on “The Mystery Behind Nancy Drew,” a presentation in this year’s Club theme of “Children’s Literature”.

Nancy Drew, the “girl sleuth,” was a publishing phenomenon. Readers believed, without question, that author Carolyn Keene was the creative source of Nancy’s appeal.

Keene’s name was imprinted on every book. Young readers sent letters to “Miss Keene” by the hundreds, asking for help with their problems, telling her about their attempts to solve mysteries of their own, and offering plot suggestions.

Alas, there was no Carolyn Keene. She existed only as a pseudonym dreamt up by Edward Stratemeyer, the wunderkind and genius of the Stratemeyer Publishing Syndicate. He set into motion The Rover Boys, the Bobbsey Twins, Tom Swift, the Hardy Boys, Bomba the Jungle Boy, and Baseball Joe, to name just a few forerunners to Nancy.

His technique was to dream up an outline for plot, then farm it out to a ghostwriter prior to his final review. His stable of ghostwriters were sworn to secrecy per the term of their contracts; they were paid a flat fee, around $100, per book. In 1929, one ghostwriter – Mildred Wirt – distinguished herself as the driving force behind Nancy Drew. She created the girl sleuth imbued with unapologetic gusto and spunk, defiance and wit, and the attraction to danger that made the series successful. Mildred’s identity as a ghostwriter, however, remained hidden for over 25 years. During that time, Edward died and his daughter Harriet Stratemeyer Adams assumed the identity of Carolyn Keene.

Harriet’s possessiveness, and her stringent rules relating to Nancy, are legendary. She loved Nancy Drew and came to view her as her creation and even her child. As time went on, she began to claim credit as the series’ sole author, referring to herself, insistently, as Carolyn Keene. It was a role she embraced, never dwelling on the inconvenient fact that someone else had filled that role years before. But that someone, Mildred, was out there still, stoically enduring for decades Harriet’s oft repeated and now entrenched narrative.

The truth of Mildred’s existence may have remained hidden forever, were it not for Harriet’s decision to switch publishers. The Syndicate’s long-time publisher, Grosset & Dunlap filed a lawsuit for copyright infringement and breach of contract. At age 87, Harriet found herself in the Federal Courthouse in downtown Manhattan. On the opening day of the trial, she got a real jolt upon seeing 74-year-old Mildred Wirt Benson in the courtroom to testify. She had not seen Mildred for over 30 years, and in amazement she uttered “I thought you were dead.” But Mildred was alive and kicking. It had taken 50 years, but the truth of all the ghostwriters began to come out. At the trial, Mildred testified, saying: “I’m not angry at the syndicate…I don’t resent anything. I just think if there are misstatements of fact, they should be corrected. Because when a statement is made wrong and repeated over and over and over again, it becomes firmly entrenched in the mind of the reading public as truth.”

On the afternoon of May 29, 2002, after handing in her column for the paper where she’d worked as a tireless writer and a dyed-in the wool reporter for years, Mildred left the office for home. She died that evening at age 96.

All across the country, obituaries heralded has as Carolyn Keene – as they had heralded Harriet when she died years before. Mildred’s final column, published posthumously, was about her love of reading and her admiration for public libraries. And thereby the mystery was solved.

The Fredonia Shakespeare Club was established in1885 and has met every year since.