A mention of Nancy Drew brings a smile of recognition from many women who grew up in America during the twentieth century and well into the twenty-first. The adventures of Nancy and her two companions, Bess and George, have been reprinted and made available to generations of preteen girls. Why do they linger on in so many women’s memories generation after generation?

Nancy Drew was not a character who was formed spontaneously in the mind of some gifted writer. She was a character developed deliberately by a man whose major talent was interpreting sales trends rather than in artful writing. Edward Stratemeyer started his career writing for magazines, which were a popular format and popular with children during the early 1900s. Stratmeyer took advantage of their popularity by turning many magazine stories into short books that could be sold very cheaply.

To produce as many books as he could for his readers, Stratemeyer devised a system. He would write an outline of a book and send it to one of a group of writers. The individual writer would fill out the story, elaborating Stratemeyer’s ideas. When the manuscript was returned, Stratemeyer would give it a final edit and find a publisher for the book. The author would sign away all rights so that his name would never appear on the cover and all of the royalties would go to the Stratemeyer syndicate. The system worked well and Stratemeyer became a wealthy man. Unfortunately, he died young, leaving his wife and two daughters to carry on without him.

Stratemeyer’s older daughter, Harriet Adams, took over managing the Nancy Drew series as well as other books. She prepared outlines for the stories and hired writers to produce the final product. Over the years, she formed a strong working relationship with the writer Mildred Wirt Benson, who wrote many of the Drew books. Although the two women worked together amicably on many of their projects, a deep rivalry developed over which of them had the major responsibility and should get the major credit for writing the series. They both had long lives and well into their 80s were still determined to get credit. They never agreed on a proper sharing arrangement.

The story of Harriet Adams and Mildred Wirt Benson is told in Melanie Rehak’s book–Nancy Drew Girl Sleuth and the Women Who Created Her (Harcourt Brace 2005). Rehak details the fascinating stories of many of the changes which had to be made over the years.

The first Nancy Drew story appeared in 1930 when Nancy was shown as a 16-year-old girl who drove around the countryside in her roadster and managed the household for her widowed father, Carson Drew. It wasn’t long before the legal driving was raised and Nancy became 18 years old. Other events in the real world affected the way Nancy appears in the books too. Although the books continued to appear during the Second World War, the authors tried hard to downplay the war and make life on the home front seem normal.

By the time Nancy books were appearing in the late 1950s, there were many changes that had to be made, so a major rewriting was in order. The authors removed references to racial differences, although they never fully integrated minority groups into the books. The books were also shortened and the language simplified over the years. One of the biggest changes was that Nancy began to be allowed to show some interest in Ned Nickerson, her faithful boyfriend, but it soon became clear that readers did not want Nancy to seriously contemplate marriage.

Over the years, series books for boys have lost most of their audience, but Nancy still carries on. There have been attempts to tell her story in other formats. She has appeared in 6 films, 3 television series, and 33 video games, but none of these have reached the level of popularity that her books have.

Perhaps Nancy Drew books will survive to reach their 100^th year in 2030. Will there still be readers interested in the mysteries? And what will Nancy look like then?