Happy Birthday Millie!

Mildred Augustine Wirt Benson was born 120 years ago today, on 10 July 1905. You might not recognise her name, but I’m willing to bet the name Carolyn Keene rings a bell. Carolyn Keene is the pseudonym Wirt Benson shared with a number of other writers who have penned the Nancy Drew books over the years. Wirt Benson was the ghostwriter of 23 of the first 30 books in the original Nancy Drew series, the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories. The character of Nancy Drew was created by Edward Stratemeyer, the founder of the Stratemeyer Syndicate. Stratemeyer started the company when he found that the demand from publishers for the children’s books he was writing exceeded his output. To keep up with the demand for more books in series he had created, he hired freelance writers. Stratemeyer wrote the outlines, the freelancer would write the manuscript under the pen name for that series, making a flat rate for their efforts, and Stratemeyer would keep the copyright.

Before Stratemeyer died in 1930, he had provided the outlines for the first four Nancy Drew books to Wirt Benson, The Secret of the Old Clock (1930), The Hidden Staircase (1930), The Bungalow Mystery (1930), and The Mystery at Lilac Inn (1930). After his death Harriet Otis Smith, Stratemeyer’s personal secretary, wrote the outline of the fifth book, The Secret at Shadow Ranch (1931), as well as editing that book and the fourth book, The Mystery at Lilac Inn (1930), she is also credited with creating the characters Bess Marvin and George Fayne, cousins and good friends of Nancy Drew. From the sixth book on, the daughters of Stratemeyer, Edna Stratemeyer Squier and Harriet Stratemeyer Adams, carried on with the creation of the outlines and editing of the books, until Edna left the Syndicate, and Harriet shouldered the work Edna had done, as well as her own. 

Wirt Benson made $125 per book for the first seven Nancy Drews, but Harriet wanted to cut the rate the ghostwriters were getting paid down to $100 per book. At this point Wirt Benson was an experienced writer, having graduated with a degree in English in 1925 from the University of Iowa, and she went on to be the first person to graduate with a Masters in Journalism there in 1927. When Wirt Benson respectfully declined a pay cut, the Syndicate hired Walter Karig to take up the reins. Karig wrote books eight, nine, and 10, and then the Syndicate had Wirt Benson back for books 11 to 25. After another gap in which the books were written by a number of writers, she was asked to write book thirty, and though she was not formally fired as a ghostwriter, she was not asked to write another Nancy Drew after that point.

It is easy to get caught up in the lore of Nancy Drew and the history of her creators, and if the number of times I have info dumped on my husband about this, my special interest, is any indicator, I could go on for days, or at least until my caffeine buzz wears off. But this is a post about Wirt Benson and she also wrote many successful children’s books, 135 in all. She got her start with the Syndicate with the 1927 book Ruth Fielding and Her Great Scenario. Stratemeyer tried Wirt Benson out, as it were, with the well established Ruth Fielding series, and he had her in mind when he pitched the Nancy Drew series to Grosset and Dunlap. At the same time as she was writing the Nancy Drew books, she was also writing Ruth Fielding, Dana Girls, and Honey Bunch books. In the late 1940s, her husband, Asa Wirt*, had a stroke and became ill, suffering a number of debilitating strokes. Meanwhile, Wirt Benson was also caring for their young daughter, Peggy, and working as a reporter. On top of that she had pseudonyms of her own, which is where, in my opinion, she did some of her best writing. 

Wirt Benson’s favourite series was the Penny Parker Mystery Stories, and I can see why. Penny is everything I believe Nancy Drew could have been if Wirt Benson had been in complete control of the writing of these books. Penny, the daughter of a newspaper man, often writes articles for her father’s paper. She is an enthusiastic and casual girl who doesn’t take anything too seriously, even when her investigating pitches her into the most dire of circumstances. The more I learn about Wirt Benson, the more I see her in the strong women she wrote. The first book Penny Parker book, Tale of the Witch Doll (1939), begins with Penny doing an expert high-dive. Like the character she created, Wirt Benson was a lauded diver in her youth. As well as being on the competitive swim team at her university, where she took part in relays and diving, she also played on the basketball team, the soccer team, wrote for the school paper, the Daily Iowan. In high school she played baseball, basketball, volleyball, acted in the senior class play, played the xylophone, and outside of school she played the slide trombone in the Ladora Band.

After being enthralled by flying in her youth, in 1964, when she was 59 years old, she got her pilot’s licence. It’s no wonder she wrote young women like Nancy Drew and Ruth Darrow who also flew planes. Suddenly all of her extremely talented heroines don’t seem so far fetched. I have often thought while reading a Nancy Drew, “is there nothing this woman can’t do?” and now I am much more inclined to believe a real live person can be as adventurous, talented, and well rounded as Nancy.  

Wirt Benson was talented and clearly had many interests, but writing was her number one objective from an early age. “I always wanted to be a writer from the time I could walk. I had no other thought except that I wanted to write.” She learned to read very early and was soon reading everything she could get her hands on. Her own town of Ladora was too small to have a library, but when possible her father would drop her off at the public library in a nearby town, and there she would spend eight hours at a time reading. 

“Writing is a way of life for me,” she said. “It’s like getting up and having breakfast.” She wrote for the Daily Iowan during university, and after graduating she wrote for the Clinton Iowa Herald, in 1944 she started working at the Toledo Blade, when it was the Toledo Times, working there for the next 58 years. On the afternoon of 28 May 2002, she filed what would be her last story. Mildred Augustine Wirt Benson, Millie, as she liked to be called, died around 8 p.m. that evening in hospital. She was 96 years old.

Through writing this I have realised that when I picture Wirt Benson, she is impossibly high above the water, mid-dive, or donning her flying cap, about to take flight. As a little girl, I wanted to be like Nancy Drew when grew up. Now, I aspire to be like Millie. 

Happy Birthday Millie.

I want to thank my dear friend Gina (@babsbelovedbooks), without whom my Mildred A. Wirt Benson collection would be almost non-existent. Thanks also to my husband for buying me my first proper vintage Nancy Drew book, and spending way too much money on the Dana Girls edition of my dreams one wedding anniversary.

Many thanks to the literary historians, librarians, journalists, and collectors who have made so much information about dear Millie available. It turns out fans of Nancy Drew make pretty great detectives.

List of references:

“Blade columnist, Nancy Drew author Millie Benson dies at age 96”: Mark Zaborney and George J. Tanber, Toledo Blade, May 29, 2002. 

Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her (2005) by Melanie Rehak 

“It’s no mystery why Nancy Drew author still writes: ‘It’s a way of life’”: John Seewer, The Associated Press, January 1, 2002.

Nancy Drew Sleuth website run by Jennifer Fisher

Series Books for Girls website run by Jennifer White

University of Iowa archives, Mildred Wirt Benson Collection

There is a lot of misinformation around Nancy Drew and Mildred A. Wirt Benson out there, I sincerely hope none has crept in here. If there are any inaccuracies they are my own and not the fault of the listed sources.

*Asa Wirt died in 1947. In 1959 she married, George Benson.

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What I Got for Christmas!

My good friend, Gina, has done it again! She sent me the very best book and book-related gifts for Christmas. Gina shares her beautiful book collection at babsbelovedbooks.blogspot.com and you can also find her on Instagram. If you are not already following her, please do. She has fabulous taste in books and she also happens to be the loveliest person.

Her package arrived back in December—well before Christmas, might I add—but as no one would mistake me for being a punctual person, it has taken me until now to get my act together. I quickly realised  that I could not just share a few photos of these gifts on Instagram and leave it at that. Each gift was so perfect that I had to say a little something about each one, and in some cases more than a little something.

Let’s talk about the books first…

I have been wanting to read more of Monica Dickens’ books since inhaling Mariana a few years ago. I really love historical fiction and children’s books, so I’m doubly excited to read The Great Fire, which is about 12-year-old Peter, who was orphaned during the Great Plague only to have to face more hardship in the Great Fire of London in 1666. This is a very slim book. So I’m saving it for the perfect quiet evening.

Two Joans at the Abbey is the thirtieth—yes, you read that correctly—book in Elsie J. Oxenham’s Abbey Girls series. This series ran from 1914 to 1959 with 38 books in all. Being a fan of Antonia Forest, Elinor M. Brent-Dyer, and Margaret Biggs, I’ve been dying to branch out to other authors of girls boarding school stories. All I really know about this series is that the girls learn folk dancing, and as a former ballet dancer, that is basically all I need to know going into this series. And yes, it probably isn’t the best idea to read a title so far in as my first foray into the series. But if I like this one I will be sure to start from the beginning, or with the earliest book I can get my hands on.

Last year, I read All Sorts of Lives: Katherine Mansfield and the Art of Risking Everything. In it, Claire Harman explores the life of Katherine Mansfield through the lens of ten of her short stories. In tandem, I read the stories being discussed, all of which can be found in the collection Wild Places: Selected Stories. I had not read anything by Mansfield before this, though of course I had heard of her in relation to Virginia Woolf, as Mansfield is a contemporary of Woolf and their stream of conscious style is often compared. Interestingly, I found one story of Mansfield’s, “The Garden Party”, reminded me of Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, which was published three years later. I’m sure I’m not the first person to make this connection and this is in no way intended as a slam on Woolf. I have read and appreciated all of Woolf’s novels, minus The Waves, which, being a tad intimidated by it, I have yet to read. It is just fun to spot these connections and speculate on them. I do not think it is a stretch to imagine that Woolf may have been inspired by Mansfield’s writing. Anyway, after finishing All Sorts of Lives and the corresponding short stories, I was pleased to find Mansfield’s “Carnations” included in Stories for Summer and Days By the Pool, a collection of short stories in the British Library Women Writers series that came out in June 2024. Published in 1920, Bliss and Other Stories is Katherine Mansfield’s second short story collection. I’m beyond excited to dive in. I’ve already read the first three, “Prelude”, “Je Ne Parle Pas Français”, and “Bliss”, but I will certainly be reading them again.

Rosamunde Pilcher is a favourite author of mine. The only reason I have never done an in-depth review of any of her books on the blog is because she is already so popular that I doubt my ability to say anything about her writing that has not already been said. Her heartwarming stories are usually set in Cornwall or Scotland. In Voices in Summer, the main character convalesces in Cornwall after an operation, while her husband goes on his annual fishing trip to Scotland and Wild Mountain Thyme begins with a trip to Scotland. I haven’t read either of these, so I’m very excited to add them to the growing number of Rosamunde Pilcher books I have on my shelves.

Young Mrs. Savage by D.E. Stevenson is another one set in Scotland. Widowed during the war, Dinah is raising four children on her own, while battling with memories of her troubled marriage. Despite her hardships, she is quick to dismiss offers of pity. But when her twin bother, Dan, sends her on a trip with the children to stay with their former Nannie at their old family home, she puts herself in the way of adventure. In my experience, D.E. Stevenson’s books are a delight. I do not expect this one will be any different. 

I recently purchased another edition of Elizabeth Goudge’s biography The Joy of the Snow from Girls Gone By Publishers. They republish rare and out-of-print books by authors of girls’ school stories. If you are looking for a copy of The Joy of Snow, as of this going up Girls Gone By still have copies in stock, but as they are a small independent publisher, they do small print runs which sell out fast. If you have already checked Blackwell's or your local bookstore, the publisher may still have stock and you can order directly from them. I was particularly interested in reading the additional material that edition boasted, the introduction, and letters written by Goudge that had not been published before. But I was beyond pleased when Gina sent me a vintage edition. There is something so special about reading from a book with a past. This one has a gift inscription from someone thanking their friend for "a delightful house party". How lovely!

Many of you might remember my failed attempt at reading the original 56 Nancy Drew Mystery Stories, last year. It was basically the project that inspired me to start a blog in the first place. But reading and reviewing one Nancy Drew book per week—two if I had both the original text and revised text books on my shelf—proved to be too time consuming. I should have done a test run of the first few books before I started the project, so I could fail privately first and then adjust the project before going public with it. Oh, hindsight! 

I do hope to get back to reviewing these, eventually. Although, I have to admit that many of the revised texts, were so bad that I was dreading writing the reviews and having to spend even more time with them. The original text Nancys are much more to my taste and we mostly have Mildred Augustine Wirt Benson’s writing to thank for that. She wrote 23 of the first 30 original text Nancy Drew books. Unfortunately, along with making Nancy Drew a more passive character, the revised texts also cut out much of the scene setting and description. But Wirt Benson didn’t just write Nancy Drew books. She penned 135 books in her lifetime, under various pen names, including Mildred Benson and Mildred A. Wirt. 

Kristie at College came out in 1960, having been first published a year earlier under the title Quarry Ghost. I believe Quarry Ghost is the American edition, as the copy of Kristie at College that Gina gave me is from UK publisher The Children’s Press. The book is about a skin-diving journalism student who gets herself involved in some controversy around a missing dinosaur relic. There is no mention of a ghost on the blurb of my edition, so I will be interested to see which title feels more appropriate to the story. 

Penny Parker was Wirt Benson’s favourite series to write. She said that Penny Parker was a better Nancy Drew than Nancy Drew. I was hesitantly optimistic when I picked up Tale of the Witch Doll, the first book in the Penny Parker series. If I didn’t already have a number of books on my shelves and even more on my wishlist I would have read every book in the series immediately after finishing that first one. How lucky am I that I get to read the second book, The Vanishing Houseboat, in this gorgeous first edition?! If you are interested in reading this series, Wildside Press has republished all of the titles in very affordable paperbacks that you can find on the Wildside Press website, your local bookstore, and other online booksellers.

In addition to writing under his own name, John Dickson Carr had a number of pen names, including Carter Dickson. I haven’t read any of his novels yet, but I have read and enjoyed a number of his short stories thanks to their inclusion in British Library Crime Classics' short story collections. If you have been on my blog for more thirty seconds you will know that I love their books. It was one of my greatest joys of last year that British Library Publishing sent me my first physical copy of a book for review. I love reading their titles, getting to review them is always something I look forward to, and when I’m not reading or reviewing them, they look very smart on my shelves. Gina has heard me talk about these books a lot, and so being the intuitive person that she is she sent me two titles by John Dickson Carr, The Black Spectacles and He Who Whispers. 

Even more so than the Mildred A. Wirt Benson titles—though I will certainly cherish them—The Skeleton in the Clock has to be the most precious book that Gina sent. There is no denying it’s a gorgeous edition, but it’s so much more than that. This copy is from Gina’s grandmother’s collection. I cannot express what an honour it is that I get to be the caretaker of such a special book. 

As I have the pleasure of adding more vintage books to my shelves, I feel like the guardian of these volumes. I do not feel I own them so much as I am giving them a place to live until they pass on to their next caretaker. 

And now for the other beautiful bits…

The little charm is actually one of an assorted set of The Wind in the Willows inspired stitch markers (for knitting or crocheting) from Beneath the Leaf. Gina had these custom made for me with my love of Mole in mind. And if you’re wondering… yes, I did cry when I found that out. There are ten in all and no two are the same. I wasn’t able to capture all of them together to my liking, but there are a number of similarly beautiful stitch markers, as well as, charm bracelets, necklaces, and earrings in her shop.

Let's take a moment to admire the Nancy Drew and Anne of Green Gables tea towels. How pretty do they look next to my favourite editions from my Nancy Drew and L.M. Montgomery collection?! I have admired the work of watercolour artist Elizabeth Wade for a while now, and these are exactly what I would have picked out for myself from her designs. And somehow Gina just knew! They look so nice pictured with my most prized books from these series that I’m thinking of hanging them on the wall of my study next to the shelves that house my children’s books. Elizabeth Wade also has prints of her stunning illustrations on her website.

I almost forgot to talk about the Dean Street Press postcards! Each postcard is of a different cover from one of the books they have published. The ones that Gina sent me are Bewildering Cares by Winifred Peck, The Ginger Cat Mystery by Robin Forsythe, and Miss Read’s Fresh From the Country. You can see a glimpse of them in the above photo, as well as a The Wind in the Willows inspired calendar. It comes from a shop called Farmhouse Greetings and features the beautiful illustrations of Linda Cook DeVona’s. As someone who is easily distracted every time I check something on my phone—don’t get me started on how much time I waste every time I go to the search page on Instagram—analogue anything is most welcome! I have posted it on the wall next to the desk in my study and I refer to it daily. 

Gina also sent some delicious seasonal gummy candies, which disappeared before I could photograph them. You might say I have a bit of a sweet tooth. 

Oh, and let’s not forget Clark, because Gina certainly didn’t! She picked out the cutest little teddy, who looks like Clark’s teddy twin. They are so cute together! Clark is a lover, not a fighter, so while this little teddy is meant for chewing, Clark prefers to rest his head in his new friend’s lap while they snooze together. 

Gina really is an incredible gift giver. Every time I open something from her I ask, “How did you know?!” She has impeccable taste, and one just has to scroll through her Instagram or visit her blog to see it in action. She is also kind, dependable, caring, and thoughtful. Basically, she is all the good things one wishes people would be, and many of us works in progress aspire to be.

I feel it would be remiss of me if I failed to mention that the little mice and the Emma Bridgewater mug featured in these photos come from a favourite shop of mine, Our House. The mice came with the names Madame Maude and Woolens Wallace, but they are just plain Maudie and Wally around our house. The adorable Year in the Country Nativity mug is an early Valentine’s Day present from my husband. The cutest part is the mouse(?) dressed as a sheep. It’s impossible not to smile while I sip my morning coffee from it. 

Next post, we will be back to the regular scheduled program with a book review of another fabulous short story collection from British Library Crime Classics.

Let's conclude this long and wordy post with one final photo of Clark with his teddy, because I simply cannot resist. 

Happy reading, friends!

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