Girl sleuth: Timeless Nancy Drew series celebrates 80 years of popularity

Before there was Bella, Ramona or even Kristy and the Baby-sitter's Club gang, there was Nancy.

Nancy Drew, that is.

Eighty years ago, Nancy made her debut in "The Secret of the Old Clock" by Carolyn Keene, and in the process, she became a symbol of strength and ingenuity for young women the world over.

But what most people don't know is that Carolyn Keene wasn't a real person, and that Nancy's creator — Edward Stratemeyer — was a man.

Nancy Drew started as a proposal by Stratemeyer to a publisher — in this case, Grosset & Dunlap, which is now part of Penguin publishers.

Through his Stratemeyer Syndicate, Stratemeyer produced a number of long-running book series — including the Bobbsey Twins and the Hardy Boys — using a team of freelance writers to write the books, which were published under a pen name owned by his company.

In the case of Nancy Drew, Stratemeyer and the publisher agreed on the name Carolyn Keene, though exactly why they chose the name is a mystery, said Nancy Drew consultant Jennifer Fisher. But the publisher did pick the name Nan Drew from a list and then lengthened her first name to Nancy.

When it comes to the classic series of 56 Nancy Drew books, there were eight ghostwriters — five women and three men. But two women — Mildred Wirt Benson and Harriet Stratemeyer Adams — wrote most of the books.

Benson was the first ghostwriter, and Adams was Stratemeyer's daughter who took over the company when her father died.

"Both of them were so strong themselves, strong, feisty, independent women, and that just spilled into the books," said Nadine Topalian, vice president and associate publisher of Grosset & Dunlap and Price Stern Sloan.

No matter who was writing for the series, the authors would always use the same pen name, and ghostwriters signed releases saying they couldn't use the pen names for themselves, said Fisher, who in addition to consulting on Nancy Drew projects, runs a fan group and a Nancy Drew website, nancydrewsleuth.com.

Adams went back through books 1-34 and redid all of them, so they are very cohesive, Topalian said. "I don't think you'd ever really be able to tell that there were that many writers across the series."

Over the past 80 years, none of the books in the classic series have ever been out of print. Which begs the question, why is this girl sleuth from the '30s still so popular?