Featuring digitized artifacts about University of Iowa alumna Mildred Wirt Benson:
journalist, pilot, amateur archaeologist, ghostwriter, and the original author
of the best-selling Nancy Drew ® mystery series
“For this series I have in mind one of our younger writers, a woman
who has just graduated from college and who has written one book already for my Syndicate and a number of stories for St. Nicholas and other high-grade magazines… She writes particularly well of college girls and their doings, both in college and out, and I feel that she could make a real success of this new line.” -- Edward Stratemeyer, June 8, 1927 [1]
When the head of Stratemeyer Syndicate sought a ghostwriter for his latest girls' series, it's not surprising that he selected Mildred Wirt Benson. Young, intelligent, and competent, Benson represented the qualities he envisioned for a new, modern type of heroine. Stratemeyer's Nancy Drew, unlike many of her fictional peers, would not focus on school, romance, or domestic affairs, but on adventure and action. She was in good hands with the very active Mildred Wirt Benson. more
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