Just Who IS Carolyn Keene?

More of this Feature • Edward and Harriet Stratemeyer • Mildred Benson • Conclusion

Related Resources • Who Remembers Nancy Drew? • History Mysteries • Books for Preteens

Elsewhere on the Web • Feminism in Adolescent Literature: a Literature Review of Nancy Drew • Readers Remain Captivated by Nancy Drew

The scenario for this mystery is neither new, nor original. In its details, it shares many aspects with those of its type; a puzzle, ignorance of facts leading to misconceptions, heroes or heroines, and, of course, villains. After recent press coverage, this question has arisen: just who is the "real" author of the Nancy Drew books?

The answer to this question began in 1884 with my great grandfather, Edward Stratemeyer, a 22 year old, aspiring writer. He committed a draft of a short story he had composed while employed in his uncle's tobacco shop to a piece of wrapping paper. Eventually, he submitted his work to Golden Days, a Philadelphia weekly, and hoped for publication. He was rewarded and this sparked the beginning of his new career.

Stratemeyer wrote many more short stories for various publications. Books followed rapidly and character based series were developed. He only once used his own name, preferring to employ nom de plums (a practice he continued throughout his career.) With his growing reputation in literary circles for his popular and exciting style of writing, he was asked by ailing friend and author, Horatio Alger Jr., to complete his unfinished works. Following Alger's death, he was encouraged and permitted to continue writing Alger type stories under Alger's name.

The imagination and story-telling abilities of Stratemeyer were boundless. By 1890, his ambitions for completed books were only limited by his own resources. In 1905, he conceived an idea to realize his aspirations, and by 1915 he officially founded the Stratemeyer Writing Syndicate. His concept was that, in addition to writing his own stories to completion, a collection of ghost writers were hired to flesh-out text from his additional outlined plots. These 'textings', performed under his direction, were returned to him for editing and necessary rewriting. All final versions were published under his Syndicate pseudonyms with Stratemeyer maintaining full editorial control and authorship of his stories.

Edward Stratemeyer was prolific. Syndicate output was astounding. By 1930, 150 highly popular series, under 100 pennames, were in various stages of production. Included in these were such notables as The Rover Boys, The Hardy Boys, The Bobbsey Twins, Bomba the Jungle Boy, Tom Swift, Ruth Fielding, The Barton Books for Girls and The Outdoor Adventure Girls. Not even young women who were at last able to read books depicting girls like themselves in exciting adventures knew that their favorite stories, under various pseudonyms, were being produced by one person, a man.

Over 46 years, Stratemeyer personally wrote some 1,000 texts and story outlines for series books. His imagination delved into every aspect of life, even to the future, predicting scientific advances in his tales for Tom Swift. His empire was vast. The Wall Street Journal and Fortune magazine has declared that "as oil had its Rockefeller, literature had its Stratemeyer." His passion resulted in the production of the most successful and widely read series of books for young men and women the United States and the world have ever known.

Suddenly, in 1930, the empire was threatened. Edward Stratemeyer died of pneumonia, at age 68. His publishers were devastated. His wife, Magdalene Van Camp was a semi-invalid and was unable to run the business, she had inherited. They sought, but could not find a buyer for his empire who was willing, or creatively able, to assume control. The responsibility, therefore, fell on his children, Edna and Harriet.

Harriet Stratemeyer entered the world in 1892 in Newark, New Jersey. She was highly intelligent and a bit of a tomboy. She excelled in school and has confessed to having been "the best one-handed fence vaulter" in her neighborhood. Raised very strictly by her parents, her earliest memories included admonishments concerning the quiet home atmosphere required for her father's work. Although Syndicate offices were located in New York, Edward Stratemeyer preferred to write from an office on the third floor of his home. He often 'descended' to test story lines on his family and delighted in posing riddles for his children at mealtimes. It was said that he could spin a bedtime story around any topic his children could imagine.

In 1910, Harriet entered Wellesley College. The college provided her not only with an excellent education, but also with the opportunity to indulge in the various sports she loved, such as riding, sailing, tennis and swimming. She concentrated in Music (she was an accomplished pianist), Religion and English, and not surprisingly, became interested in creative writing and journalism, editing the school newspaper. As college press correspondent, she sold articles to The Boston Globe, Newark Evening News and New Sunday Call. Harriet not only distinguished herself academically, but also personally. She was awarded a medal for bravery during the Tower Court dormitory fire, after reentering the burning building repeatedly to save her fellow students. In 1914, she achieved a BA and graduated with honors.

After graduation, Harriet was offered three jobs, as pianist for a Boston church and as a journalist for newspapers in Boston and New York. Although her father depicted "modern" women in his books, he insisted that, until marriage, his own daughter's place was in their home. As strong-willed as her father, however, a compromise was reached. Harriet went to work for the Syndicate, but from her home, editing ghost writers' fleshed-out text from her father's, outlined stories.

This began Harriet's apprenticeship learning her father's formula for his books. On one such occasion, early in her work, she wrestled with a long, verbose description of a character's boating mishap. Realizing that the wordy passage has to be trimmed, she consulted her father. He read it through, drew a line through virtually the entire text and simply wrote, "Suddenly, he fell overboard." This was Harriet's first lesson in the efficacy in adventure stories of concise writing.

Harriet's writing for her father diminished following her marriage to Russell Vroom Adams and finally ended in 1915, after the arrival of the first of her four children, Russell Jr. (Sonny), Patricia (Patsy), Camilla and, my father, Edward Stratemeyer Adams. Harriet's father firmly advised that she should concentrate on her "babies." This advice she followed to a degree, finding time to found the New Jersey Wellesley Club and the Maplewood Women's Club's magazine, Members Chat. She volunteered for numerous organizations, such as the Girl Scouts, ran all the Sunday school lessons at the local Prospect Presbyterian Church and wrote poetry.

Although very capable, therefore, it was with some trepidation that Harriet Adams contemplated herself and her sister's partnering in the running of their father's book empire following his death in 1930. Unwilling to disappoint the countless readers of Syndicate books, however, they rose to the challenge. They become legal partners, and Syndicate offices were moved to East Orange, N.J. to be closer to Harriet's family home. Eventually, by 1942, after her sister's marriage, Harriet assumed full control and became senior partner of the Stratemeyer Syndicate.

Harriet Stratemeyer Adams ran the Stratemeyer book empire for the 40 years. She wrote complete books and story outlines, and, like her father before her, had final editorial control over all manuscripts, in full command of all aspects of the business, until literally the day of her death in 1982 at age 89. It was an amazing feat for her time, as successful business woman were virtually unknown. She steered the business through economic depression and World War, reducing the number of series and introducing new ones, altering the books and allowing film and TV versions to increase their popularity. She was always vigilant and rewrote books to reflect changing attitudes to ethnic stereotyping and dialect and changes in US federal and state laws.

In the 70's, pressure mounted from the media to expose the secrets behind popular series books. It had been discovered that series such as The Bobbsey Twins, Honey Bunch and Norman, The Happy Hollister, The Hardy Boys, Tom Swift, Linda Craig, The Dana Girls and Nancy Drew were but a few of the 150 series produced by the Stratemeyer Writing Syndicate. Harriet eventually succumbed to their persistent requests for interviews and broke with her father's convention concerning anonymity. She revealed the current face behind the Syndicate pseudonyms, Harriet Stratemeyer Adams. The resulting notoriety, however unjustifiably, but not unexpectedly, brought problems for the Syndicate's senior partner.

The Stratemeyer Syndicate's head had the full, legal and moral right to claim ownership and authorship of Syndicate books, their characters and pennames. As senior partner of the Syndicate, Edward, and then Harriet, exercised final authority over their books' content, with the right to assert authorship of their stories. Some fifty ghost writers were, at various times, employed by the Syndicate. They were each required, as a condition of their employment, to sign an unequivocal anonymity contract. Any rights to their contributions to Syndicate stories were relinquished by legal contract after completion of each piece of their work. They were always extremely well paid for their writing, relative to monetary values at that time, and happily sold their work, whether this involved Syndicate type, commissioned stories of their own, or fleshed-out, Stratemeyer story outlines. Ghost writers were always fully aware of the ramifications of the contracts they signed.

In order to fully understand the position taken by the Syndicate's head, an analogy can be drawn with historical grand master painters and their studios. Various apprentices and other painters, needing work, were hired to assist in the master painter's commissions. This was acceptable in order to increase his output. They studied the master's style, under his direction, in order to mimic his work. Their contributions to his paintings varied from a few brush strokes, detailing work, to complete copies. The paintings, in subject, concept and detail, any work undertaken on the master's behalf and the final products were the property of the studio master. There was no question that he had the right to sign his name to his finished paintings. This concept and the details of the terms of employment in the Stratemeyer Syndicate of its ghost writers are salient in comprehending the puzzle of the "mystery" of authorship of the Nancy Drew books.

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A user-contributed article by Cynthia Adams Lum