Girl Sleuth (43 page)

In August 2002, in the face of great skepticism from me, Noah Isenberg put me on a plane to Iowa, fully believing that I would come home with a book in my head. Over the course of three years his unshakable faith in me with regard to this project and so much else has been the reason many improbable things became possible. Living with a writer—this writer, at least—can be maddening; he does it with grace, compassion, humor, and the enviable good sense of a man who knows what really matters.

INTRODUCTION

“Eighteen and attractive”:
All excerpts from
Mystery of the Tolling Bell
in this section come from Carolyn Keene,
Mystery of the Tolling Bell
(New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1976), pp. 1, 164, 181.

“I was such a Nancy Drew fan”:
Dick Pothier, “Nancy Drew: First Libber?”
Boston Globe,
January 6, 1976.

“If there is a woman”:
unsigned editorial, “Harriet S. Adams,”
Springfield (MA) Daily News,
March 31, 1982.

“‘Keeping Nancy Drew Alive
'”: Sara Paretsky, “Keeping Nancy Drew Alive,” introduction to the facsimile edition of Carolyn Keene,
The Secret of the Old Clock
(Bedford, MA: Applewood Books, 1992).

“‘I Owe It All to Nancy Drew
'”: Nancy Pickard, “I Owe It All to Nancy Drew,” introduction to the facsimile edition of Carolyn Keene,
The Hidden Staircase
(Bedford, MA: Applewood Books, 1991).

“Novelist Bobbie Ann Mason”:
Bobbie Ann Mason,
The Girl Sleuth: On the Trail of Nancy Drew, Judy Bolton, and Cherry Ames
(Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1995), p. x.

“Writing in the
New York Times”:
Maureen Dowd, “Our New No-Can-Do Nation,”
New York Times,
April 11, 2004.

“At odds with”:
Mildred Benson, “The Nancy I Knew,” introduction to the facsimile edition of Carolyn Keene,
The Mystery at Lilac Inn
(Bedford, MA: Applewood Books, 1994) (hereafter cited as
Lilac Inn
intro).

“A tangle of white curls”:
Christopher Borrelli, “The Storied Life of Millie Benson,”
Ohio
magazine, December/January 1991, p. 62.

“As a 9-year-old”:
Fredda Sacharow, “When Nancy Drew's Mother Revealed the Secret of Cooking Up a Mystery Plot,”
New York Times,
April 11, 1982.

 

CHAPTER ONE: THE STRATEMEYER CLAN

“These suggestions are for”:
Edward Stratemeyer to Grosset & Dunlap, September 20, 1929, Stratemeyer Syndicate Records, 1832–1984, New York Public Library, box 320 (hereafter cited as SSR/NYPL).

“‘Victor Horton's Idea
'”:
Golden Days,
November 2–9, 16–23, 30, 1889, SSR/NYPL, box 310.

“A scholarly appearance”:
“Mr. Stratemeyer, a Writer for Boys,”
Newark Sunday News,
March 9, 1902.

“A tranquil-faced man”:
“Newarker Whose Name Is Best Known,”
Newark Sunday Call,
December 19, 1917 (hereafter cited as “Newarker Whose Name . . .”).

“His initial long story”:
“Newarker Who Writes for Most Critical of All Readers Has Far Exceeded Standard His Mother Set,”
Newark Evening News,
June 4, 1927 (hereafter cited as “Newarker Who Writes . . .”).

“I think you would become”:
Golden Days
to Edward Stratemeyer, January 29, 1889, cited in Trudi Johanna Abel, “A Man of Letters; a Man of Business. Edward Stratemeyer and the Adolescent Reader: 1880–1930” (Ph.D. diss., Rutgers University, 1993), p. 29 (hereafter cited as Abel).

“Wholesale and retail”:
Abel, p. 18.

“You ask when”:
Edward Stratemeyer to Richard A. Bird, September 15, 1919, SSR/NYPL, box 24.

“Two chapbooks”:
These were shown to me by James Keeline, who has copies in his private collection in San Diego, CA.

“I had quite a library”:
“Newarker Who Writes . . .”

“Only 1 percent”:
Nancy Woloch, “Women's Education,”
Houghton Mifflin Reader's Companion to American History
(New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1991), p. 326.

“He continued to combine”:
James D. Keeline, “Edward Stratemeyer, Author and Literary Agent, 1876–1906” (paper presented at the annual meeting of the Popular Culture Association, San Diego, CA, 1999).

“No sermonizing”:
Selma G. Lanes, “Who Killed St. Nicholas,”
Down the Rabbit Hole
(New York: Atheneum Books, 1976), p. 18.

“Mark Twain, Rudyard Kipling”:
Nancy Milford,
Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay
(New York: Random House, 2001), p. 7.

“The gap between”:
Frank Luther Mott,
A History of American Magazines,
5 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1930–86), cited in Deidre Johnson,
Edward Stratemeyer and the Stratemeyer Syndicate,
Twayne's United States Authors Series, ed. Ruth MacDonald (New York: Twayne's Publishers, 1993), p. 34 (hereafter cited as Johnson).

“M is for millions”:
“Newarker Who Writes . . .”

“By 1926”:
Arthur Prager, “Edward Stratemeyer and His Book Machine,”
Saturday Review,
July 10, 1971.

“As one hometown”:
“Newarker Who Writes . . .”

“The only great act”:
Cynthia Adams Lum, “Nancy Drew's Mother” (paper presented at the Nancy Drew Sleuths conference, New York, NY, May 3, 2003) (hereafter cited as Adams Lum).

“The best wife”:
Adams Lum.

“Mrs. S has read”:
Edward Stratemeyer to Evelyn Raymond, November 17, 1906, SSR/NYPL, box 20.

“Altogether too much”:
Street & Smith to Edward Stratemeyer, March 15, 1890, cited in Abel, p. 39.

“As one dazzled reporter”:
Edward Bok, “Literary Factories,”
Publishers Weekly,
August 13, 1892, cited in Abel, pp. 41–42.

“In 1890 roughly 60 percent”:
Karen Manners Smith, “New Paths to Power: 1890–1920,” in
No Small Courage: A History of Women in the United States,
ed. Nancy F. Cott (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 359 (hereafter cited as Manners Smith).

“A brand new”:
Edward T. LeBlanc,
Street & Smith Dime Novel Bibliography Part I: Black and White Era 1889–1897
(privately published, n.d.), p. 85, cited in Abel, p. 43.

“The ‘Literary Account Book of Edward Stratemeyer'”:
SSR/NYPL, box 317 (hereafter cited as Literary Account Book).

“This week, I sold a book”:
Adams Lum.

“I grew up in a story-book house”:
The Secret of Nancy Drew,
16mm, 32 min., Protean Productions, Inc., New York, 1982 (hereafter cited as
Secret of Nancy Drew).

“My recollection of him as a child”:
Harriet Adams interview by Richard Gallagher, East Orange, NJ, January 23, 1973.

“I was fortunate”:
Brenda Woods, “Goody Goody Gumshoe,”
New York Daily News
, May 13, 1980.

“I am afraid I shall have to”:
Edward Stratemeyer to J. F. Flood, 1907 (letter is incorrectly dated 2/46/07), SSR/NYPL, box 20.

“Don't take the heart out of a fellow”:
Edward Stratemeyer to W. F. Gregory, December 29, 1906, SSR/NYPL, box 20.

“The Newark neighborhood of Roseville”:
“Roseville Days—A View of Newark Boyhood in 1888, by One of the Boys,”
Proceedings of the New Jersey Historical Society,
vol. XII (Newark: New Jersey Historical Society, 1927), pp. 445–51 (hereafter cited as “Roseville Days”).

“The city had been purchased”:
Edward S. Rankin, “The Purchase of Newark from the Indians,”
Proceedings of the New Jersey Historical Society,
vol. XII (Newark: New Jersey Historical Society, 1927), pp. 442–45.

“By 1897”:
John T. Cunningham,
Newark
(Newark: New Jersey Historical Society, 1966), p. 201.

“Streets had been cut through/the pleasure of city”:
“Roseville Days.”

“Games and recreation/Rare was the girl”:
Victoria Bissell Brown, “Golden Girls: Female Socialization Among the Middle Class of Los Angeles,” in
Small Worlds: Children and Adolescents in America, 1850–1950,
ed. Elliott West and Paula Petrik (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1992), p. 244 (hereafter cited as Bissell Brown).

“After the age of thirteen”:
Anna Kohler Barnes, “Children's Ideas of Lady and Gentleman,”
Studies in Education
2 (June 1, 1902), p. 147, cited in Bissell Brown, p. 253.

“The best one-handed fence vaulter”:
Carlette Winslow, “Alias Carolyn Keene,”
Suburban Life,
February 1968.

“The inculcation of respect”:
Bissell Brown, p. 233.

“Among the boys”:
Karen DeWitt, “The Case of the Hidden Author,”
Newsday,
August 8, 1977 (hereafter cited as DeWitt).

“When her grandmother gave her the gift”:
Adams Lum.

“Born without a middle name”:
song lyrics from Harriet Adams's eighty-third birthday party, December 1975, SSR/NYPL, box 50.

“She was enamored”:
Susan Sherman Fadiman, “The Mystery of Carolyn Keene,”
St. Louis Globe Democrat,
December 21–22, 1974.

“What I would like to have been”:
Linda Abrahams, “Mystery Writing a Family Tradition,”
South Middlesex (NJ) Sunday News,
March 12, 1978.

“A couple of hours”:
DeWitt.

“One day in second grade”:
Harriet Adams, notes for luncheon speech delivered at the Wellesley Club, May 10, 1973, Stratemeyer Syndicate Papers, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, box 8 (hereafter cited as SSP/Beinecke).

“The author had hoped”:
Edward Stratemeyer, preface to the revised edition of
Richard Dare's Venture; or, Striking Out for Himself
(Boston: Lee & Shepard, 1902), p. iv.

“Difficult task”:
“Newarker Whose Name . . .”

“But the depression of the 1890s”:
Douglas Steeples and David O. Whitten,
Democracy in Desperation: The Depression of 1893
(Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1998), p. 50.

“Of all the deadly schemes”:
Frank A. Munsey,
The Story of the Founding and Development of the Munsey Publishing-House
(New York: Devine Press, 1901), pp. 21–22, cited in Abel, p. 84.

“An enterprising man”:
Ralph D. Gardner,
Horatio Alger; or, The American Hero Era
(Mendota, IL: Wayside Press, 1964), p. 292, cited in Richard Gallagher, “Edward Stratemeyer: A Study in Cultural History,” spring 1974, Western Connecticut State College, p. 1 (unpublished).

“An experiment”:
Abel, p. 102.

“The people do not seem”:
Mershon Company to Edward Stratemeyer, April 10, 1898, cited in Abel, p. 107.

“Lost overboard while on a trip”:
Edward Stratemeyer to Lee & Shepard, June 13, 1898, cited in Abel, p. 108.

“Almost before the smoke of battle”:
Ayers Brinser, “For It Was Indeed He,”
Fortune,
April 1934, p. 206 (hereafter cited as “For It Was Indeed He”).

“The Rover Boys broke out”:
“For It Was Indeed He,” p. 208.

“Motivations were of the essence”:
“He Invented the Rover Boys,”
Christian Science Monitor,
December 5, 1942, p. 19 (hereafter cited as “He Invented . . .”)

“Were never embarrassed”:
“He Invented . . .” p. 7.

“Although many of the incidents”:
Edward Stratemeyer to Luther Danner, February 2, 1917, SSR/NYPL, box 24.

“Mr. Stratemeyer thoroughly deserves”:
Waldo G. Browne, “Sketches of Writers, XVII—Edward Stratemeyer,”
Writer,
March 1902, p. 41.

“Nan was a tall and slender girl”:
Laura Lee Hope,
The Bobbsey Twins; or, Merry Days Indoors and Out
(New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1904), p. 2.

“Almost as many girls write to me”:
Edward Stratemeyer to Rowland Stalter, April 2, 1906, SSR/NYPL, box 20.

“The little girl begins”:
“Newarker Whose Name . . .”

“I have two little girls”:
Edward Stratemeyer to Grace LeBaron Upham, September 23, 1901, cited in Abel, p. 257.

“The plots and outlines”:
“Newark Author Great Favorite with Young Folks, Talk of Stories for Boys,”
Newark Sunday News,
June 16, 1903, cited in Johnson, p. 6.

“A book brought out”:
Edward Stratemeyer to W. L. Alison Co., October 12, 1898, SSR/NYPL, box 20.

“Neck deep”:
Edward Stratemeyer to James Logan, February 28, 1905, SSR/NYPL, box 20.

“All right, title and interest”:
Stratemeyer Syndicate Books author release form, 8/29/1930, SSP/Beinecke, box 1.

“In 1905, the first year of its existence”:
Literary Account Book.

“The syndicate idea is booming”:
Edward Stratemeyer to Mershon & Co., March 21, 1905, SSR/NYPL, box 20.

“The father of”:
“For It Was Indeed He,” p. 87.

“Did you ever use”:
Edward Stratemeyer to Weldon Cobb, September 15, 1906, SSR/NYPL, box 20.

“A sunshiny room”:
Harriet Adams to Frederick Chase, September 26, 1941, SSR/NYPL, box 29.

“The exciting stories”:
Bissell Brown, p. 253.

“He thought I should”:
DeWitt.

“As a result”:
Adams Lum.

“At the turn of the century”:
Gail Collins,
America's Women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines
(New York: William Morrow, 2003), p. 259 (hereafter cited as Collins); Manners Smith, p. 360.