Strong, smart, and independent, with a taste for adventure and aversion to housework, NancyDrew was the role model for generations of teenaged feminists-to-be throughout America and the world.

And before Nancy Drew, there was Mildred Wirt Benson—AKA Dorothy West, AKA Joan Clark, AKA Don Palmer, AKA Ann Wirt, AKA Frank Bell, and her most famous alias, Carolyn Keene—creator of the Nancy Drew Series.

Today, at the age of 79, Benson (who continues to write as a reporter for a Toledo, Ohio newspaper called the Toledo Blade) recalls the beginning of her career.

"Soon after obtaining a bachelor's degree in 1925 at the UI, and working for a year on a Clinton, Iowa newspaper, I headed for New York City. An anticipated writing job failed to materialize, but I did meet Edward Stratemeyer, head of the Stratemeyer Syndicate and author of numerous series books, including the famed Rover Boys. The syndicate consisted of Stratemeyer himself, a secretary, and a few 'ghosts' who accepted a brief plot outline, vanished, and returned to the office weeks later with a finished manuscript."

After Benson returned to her parents' home in Ladora, Iowa, Stratemeyer gave her the opportunity to continue the then-faltering Ruth Fielding series. She jumped at the chance and although it was a difficult job ("It fought me on every page," she now says; "I felt no kinship with the main character"), she produced her first book. She then wrote a second volume, Ruth Clears Her Name, which came easier.

"By this time I was brain-deep in graduate work at the UI. The story was written on a typewriter in the old journalism school. Fortunately my professors assumed that I was hard at work on a thesis."

After receiving her master's degree in journalism, Benson started the series that was to become her most famous—Nancy Drew.

" The plots provided me were brief, yet certain hackneyed names and situations could not be bypassed, "Benson says. "So I concentrated upon Nancy trying to make her a departure from the stereotyped heroine commonly encountered in series books of the day."

Judging from the series' popularity, something was special about Nancy Drew. Over the 38 years in which Benson wrote the books, they were translated into 17 languages and sold over 30 million copies.

"It seems to me," she says, "that Nancy was popular, and remains so, primarily because she personifies the dream image which exists within most teenagers. She never lost an athletic contest and was far smarter than adults with whom she associated. Leisure time was spent living dangerously. She avoided all household tasks, and indeed, might rate as a pioneer of Women's Lib. In a way, she started a movement."

But, perhaps because the word wasn't coined until decades after she wrote the Nancy Drew series, Benson says she doesn't consider herself a feminist. "But I do believe in equality," she says emphatically. "Which, by the way, women still do not have!"

Benson bemoans the lack of equally inspiring books for teenaged girls today—and the short-lived TV series Nancy Drew, which she watched only once: "It was quite horrible; the only thing it had in common with my books was the name.

The show Murder She Wrote seemed to me to be a lot closer to the Nancy Drew style, and I read somewhere that the star of the program, Angela Lansbury, used to read the Nancy Drew books."

Even with the TV show and the inevitable spinoffs—Nancy Drew lunch boxes, toys, and notebooks—Benson never made much money from the series. As a syndicate writer, she was paid $125 to $250 per book, all rights released to the syndicate.

But Benson isn't bitter. Like Nancy Drew herself, she was looking for, and found, adventure and the satisfactions of a life well lived. She has worked as a commercial pilot and as the aviation columnist for a major newspaper, where she continues to lead the hectic life of a general reporter.

Asked if she feels fulfilled by the knowledge that her books have had such a major effect on so many people, she responds, "Well, I never think about it. For one thing, I wrote other books that I liked better than the more popular Nancy Drew series—the Penny Parker books. And, at the time you're writing, you just don't think about things like that. You just feel and write."

Osha Davidson, 82BA, was editorial associate for the alumni magazine when he wrote this article about Mildred Wirt Benson

*Mildred Wirt Benson was awarded a Distinguished Alumni Award for Achievement in 1994.