Nancy Drew is 95 years old as of April 28, 2025!!

She’s looking pretty good for someone her age, isn’t she?

The first Nancy Drew book, The Secret of the Old Clock, was released on April 28, 1930. Two more books, The Hidden Staircase and The Bungalow Mystery. Since then, there have been millions of books published, TV shows and movies produced, spin-off series launched, and culture impacted.

Who would have imagined that children’s stories about a teenage girl sleuth would launch a worldwide phenomenon? I doubt even Nancy’s creator Edward Stratemeyer would have imagined it.

The concept for Nancy Drew was created in the 1920s by Stratemeyer who also created the  idea of The Hardy Boys. Well, if it wasn’t Stratemeyer alone who created her, it was a combination of him and those who worked with him at The Stratemeyer Syndicate.

The Syndicate was Stratemeyer’s brainchild, created after  he’d already found success writing stories for children, starting when he was a child himself.

According to a 2018 article in The New Yorker, Stratemeyer was born in 1862 in New Jersey. He was the youngest of six children. As a child he spent a lot of time reading the popular rags-to-riches tales of Horatio Alger and William T. Adams (a.k.a. Oliver Optic). In his teens he bought his own printing press and created his own stories. At the age of 26 he sold his first story, “Victor Horton’s Idea” to Golden Days, a popular boys magazine at the time. He was paid $75 for the story and his father, who previously had seen his writing as a waste of time, suggested he write more.

He did write more, under a variety of pen names. Then he became an editor at Good News, another child magazine. Eventually he became a ghost writer for various children’s book authors, wrote many of his own, and turned out ideas for other authors to create characters. Many said he wasn’t a great writer, but he was great at ideas.

As his ideas began to sell books, he decided to form a syndicate or a publishing company which would produce books in an assembly line style. By 1910 his syndicate was producing ten or more juvenile titles with about a dozen different writers. By 1920 tens of millions of books produced by the Stratemeyer Syndicate were circulating with surveys showing that in 1926, ninety-eight percent of children listed at least one Stratemeyer produced book as their favorite.

According to the article in The New Yorker, this is how it worked:

“Stratemeyer would come up with a three-page plot for each book, describing locale, characters, time frame, and a basic story outline. He mailed this to a writer, who, for a fee ranging from fifty dollars to two hundred and fifty dollars, would write the thing up and—slam-bang!—send it back within a month. Stratemeyer checked the manuscripts for discrepancies, made sure that each book had exactly fifty jokes, and cut or expanded as needed. (Each series had a uniform length; the standard was twenty-five chapters.) He replaced the verb “said” with “exclaimed,” “cried,” “chorused,” and so forth, and made sure that cliffhangers punctuated the end of each chapter—usually framed as a question or an exclamation. Each series was published under a pseudonym that Stratemeyer owned. As Fortune later noted, it was good business for children to become attached to a name, but it would be bad business for that name to leave the syndicate with the ghostwriter.”

And this, eventually, would be where the name Carolyn Keene, the “author” of Nancy Drew came from. In reality, there was no Carolyn Keene. There were only a large number of writers who wrote the books the way Edward Stratemeyer, and later his daughter, Harriet, wanted, just like they had all the other titles and series.

Series produced by the Stratemeyer Syndicate included Tom Swift, Bobbsey Twins, Rover Boys, Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew Mysteries, Motor Boys and some 50 others.

Nancy Drew’s first book came out April 28, 1930. Twelve days later, Edward Stratemeyer, who had already published millions of books was dead of pneumonia at the age of 67.

His two daughters were left with the question of what to do with the company. Should they continue it? Sell it?

Eventually, the daughters would take over the business, but Harriet would become the driving force behind the company, including helping to make Nancy Drew a worldwide phenomenon.

Grossett and Dunlap produced the books produced by Stratemeyer and they greenlighted the Nancy Drew series after receiving this memo from him:

“These suggestions are for a new series for girls verging on novels. 224 pages, to retail at fifty cents. I have called this line the “Stella Strong Stories,” but they might also be called “Diana Drew Stories,” “Diana Dare Stories,” “Nan Nelson Stories,” “Nan Drew Stories” or “Helen Hale Stories.” […] Stella Strong, a girl of sixteen, is the daughter of a District Attorney of many years standing. He is a widower and often talks over his affairs with Stella and the girl was present during many interviews her father had with noted detectives and at the solving of many intricate mysteries. Then, quite unexpectedly, Stella plunged into some mysteries of her own and found herself wound up in a series of exciting situations. An up-to-date American girl at her best, bright, clever, resourceful and full of energy.”

One of the first writers of the series was Mildred Wirt Benson (just Mildred Wirt when she wrote the series). In fact, Stratemeyer had her in mind when he conceptualized the series.

She wrote twenty-three out of the first thirty books in the Nancy Drew series.

This would become a source of controversy in 1980 when Harriet tried to claim she had written all of the Nancy Drew books herself under the Carolyn Keene pseudonym. A court case involving Grosset & Dunlap and Simon & Schuster about who owned the rights to produce Nancy Drew books drew Mildred out of the woodwork and made Harriet admit she’d helped to write the books, and at one point rewrite them, but she was not the primary writer for most of the books.

When Harriet rewrote the Nancy Drew books in the 1950s she changed the sleuth’s personality from Benson’s original vision of her being more spunky and assertive than Benson had made her.

Mildred had been working for the Syndicate since 1926 when she had answered an ad at the age of 21. The ad had stated that the publishing house was looking for young writers who could come up with new ideas for juvenile books.

She wrote for other Stratemeyer series, but it was Nancy that would become the breakout success. Not that Mildred told a lot of people about her role in the books, partially because she was not supposed to as part of her agreement with the syndicate, who she worked with the syndicate until the early 1950s when management changes changed her role.

Mildred wrote the first Nancy Drew book at the age of 24.

In an interview with WTGE Public Media in Toledo, Ohio, the city where Mildred eventually settled down, she said she didn’t know when she was writing those first books that Nancy would become as big as she did.

“In fact, I don’t think anyone ever anticipated the success such as Nancy Drew has had,” she said. “But I did know that I was creating something that was an unusual book. I knew from the way I felt as I wrote that I was writing something that would be popular.”

While Harriet took the opportunity in 1973, after her sister’s death, to claim she helped her father create Nancy Drew, the 1980 court case blew that out of the water and Benson was subsequently credited with helping to create Nancy. Harriet was, however, a contributor to changes to the books Mildred wrote (taming Nancy Drew down readers say) and the promotion of them, as well as helping ghost writers write later editions.

Later Benson would name the second book in the original series, The Hidden Staircase, as her favorite book to write. Over the years she agreed to sign Nancy Drew books, but only those she had actually written.

Other titles Benson worked on for the syndicate included Kay Tracey and Dana Girls mysteries. After leaving the syndicate she wrote the Penny Park mystery series, which was about the daughter of a newspaper editor who was trying to become a newspaper reporter herself. She called Penny the favorite character she’d ever created, even over Nancy Drew, because she considered Penny “a better Nancy Drew than Nancy is.”

In 1944 Benson began writing for the Toledo Blade and continued to work there for 58 years, focusing mainly on journalism for the rest of her life.  It’s why the Toledo Public Library held a Nancy Drew Convention on Friday to celebrate her 95 years.

Benson was a true Nancy Drew and you can read more about her in my separate post here.

Though Nancy Drew was written during the Great Depression, her books didn’t focus on the struggles of everyday citizens. Instead, Nancy was jetting off on trips, driving nice cars, taking flying lessons, learning new skills, being bold. She loved fashion but she also wasn’t afraid of getting her hands dirty.

She could wear pearls and a dress one evening and wear jeans and sneakers the next.

Nancy Drew books never focused on the macabre. Very few books discussed murders. There was very little description of violence. There was absolutely no sex show or even discussed. Nancy had a boyfriend (Ned Nickerson) but they didn’t even kiss.

In other words, Nancy didn’t drink, didn’t smoke, and didn’t go out with boys who did.

Nancy’s image was very important to Harriet, who wanted Nancy to be someone young women could look up to and strive to be like.

Cara Strickland wrote in a 2018 article for JTSOR Daily, that Nancy’s books were “intended to be safe for children, but also functioned as an escape from the heavy realities of their cultural moment.”

The mysteries in a Nancy Drew book were simple, yet also featured complex elements, such as red herrings and miscommunications.

They were fast-moving, full of minimal descriptions, and void of deep exchanges among the characters. They didn’t make you think much beyond what mystery was unfolding and how it was being solved.

The goal of the books wasn’t to address current events or push agendas. Their goal was simply to show the book’s heroes prevailing over evil and setting the world right again.

Young readers loved this, and now, many adults do as well.

The lack of mention of current events also made sure the books remained timeless.

Yes, the books, especially the earlier ones, are certainly dated. There are aspects that some in today’s world might see as culturally insensitive, old-fashioned, or out of touch.

They still, however, show us a young woman who is brave, curious, driven, and determined to solve mysteries to help other people.

From that first book in 1930 came 600 different titles, including spinoffs and updates. Later came movies (the first appearing in 1938), TV Shows, video games, comic books, podcasts, and, of course, merchandise of all kinds (lunch boxes, t-shirts, bookmarks, socks, etc. etc.).

Nancy Drew was originally published by Grosset & Dunlap, but during the lawsuit filed in 1980, as mentioned above, Simon & Schuster won the rights to publish Nancy Drew books after the first 56 because in 1979, the Syndicate had switched to Simon & Schuster. Grosset & Dunlap retained the publishing rights to the first 56 books and eventually Simon & Schuster purchased the Stratemeyer Syndicate in 1984.

The Nancy Drew Mysteries (original series) ran from 1930 to 2003 and produced 175 different titles. Nancy Drew Girl Detective ran from 2004 to 2012. The Nancy Drew Diaries started in 2013 and continue through today. Many fans of the original, more sanitized versions of Nancy, haven’t appreciated the more modernized version of Nancy. So much so that some of the series were discontinued.

The original Nancy Drew series, without the more modern social aspects the more modern series might have, remains the perfect escape from a world growing increasingly chaotic and frightening. Now, though, it isn’t only younger readers craving that escape. People, mainly women, of all ages, are losing themselves in Nancy Drew mystery books. Whether they are revisiting them from when they were young girls or finding them for the first time, they are filling a void that other books can’t for them.

I am one of those women.

Avery, host of True Drew: A Podcast Of All Things Nancy Drew is another one of those women.

“I guess I would say that I’m a fan of the Nancy Drew book series because it is a comfort to me,” Avery wrote to me this weekend. “Reading the books now as an adult instantly transports me back to a simpler time, when I was a girl, and Nancy was a constant companion to me, whether at school, on a road trip, or just laying on a blanket in the backyard on a sunny day and reading one of her mysteries. Nancy Drew showed me from a young age that women can be capable, skilled and smart. She modeled all of the best qualities: how to be a good friend, a good daughter and a good detective! And it always struck me as really cool that my mother and grandmother, who got me into the series, read the books before I did and it was something we could share and talk about together.”

On her website, Avery shares: “In Nancy, I saw a young woman who was not only capable, smart and resourceful when she solved mysteries, but a character that shared my strawberry blonde or “titian” hair color. Back in April 2023, my dad and I happened to go to an estate sale where I bought 70+ Nancy Drew books I had never read or seen before–later paperbacks from the 1990’s–and the idea for @TrueDrewPodcast was born!”

Laura Puckett, a reader and mom, also started reading Nancy when she was young.

“My memories of Nancy Drew started when I was quite young,” she writes. “Right after piano lessons my mother would take me to the library, and I would take the direct path to the sgelf with all the yellow book spines. Finding the next mystery that I hadn’t read, I would barely contain my excitement while looking at the cover to see which adventure I’d get to go along with Nancy on. These books accompanied me on road trips, in my hammock, in my bed before sleep, and so many other places. They are a pleasant part of my childhood and helped me fall in love with reading.”

Mystery author Trixie Silvertale started reading Nancy Drew books when she was five or six years old.

“It was very meaningful to read about a female main character. The fact that she was intelligent and broke a few rules, but did the right thing in the end, was a really great role model… Even though I didn’t realize it at the time! I always think of those books fondly.”

Are the stories in a Nancy Drew Mystery earth-shattering or life-changing? Not usually.

Are they hard-hitting and full of globally impactful wisdom? Nope.

Are they full of gritty stories and swoony romantic scenes? Not at all.

And all those reasons are why so many readers still find themselves reaching for them at libraries, bookstores, and thrift shops today.  95 years after they were first introduced.

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Additional resources:

Tell Me More About: Mildred “Millie” Wirt Benson (The original Carolyn Keene)

https://www.truedrewpodcast.com/

https://daily.jstor.org/the-secret-syndicate-behind-nancy-drew/

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2004/11/08/nancy-drews-father

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carolyn_Keene

https://www.tampabay.com/archive/2002/05/30/nancy-drew-s-author-dies-at-96/

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mildred_Benson

https://www.lib.uiowa.edu/iwa/mildred/

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Nancy-Drew

https://barrewithjustine.ca/2024/05/17/the-history-and-enduring-appeal-of-the-nancy-drew-stories/

https://crimereads.com/a-cultural-history-of-nancy-drew/

https://www.encyclopedia.com/children/academic-and-educational-journals/nancy-drew

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Lisa R. Howeler is a blogger, homeschool mom, and writes cozy mysteries. 

You can find her Gladwynn Grant Mystery series HERE.

You can also find her on Instagram and YouTube.