The original Nancy Drew series contains 175 books, but would go on to spawn another 124 titles in the Nancy Drew Files series and Nancy Drew Diaries series. The earliest movie adaptations were made in the late 30s, and more recently, a Hollywood version starring Emma Roberts hit the big screen in 2007. Though the studio planned for sequels, those plans were shelved after the movie’s poor performance at the box office.

As for Mildred Wirt Benson, her career wasn’t limited to Nancy Drew. She began working as a journalist in the 1940s, first as a court reporter for the Toledo Times and later as a writer for the Toledo Blade. “She was a real force to be reckoned with,” said one of her colleagues. “And she was one of those rare, enviable writers who can write in her own voice.” She wrote a weekly column for the Toledo Blade for 58 years, continuing to work full-time writing obituaries until her own death from lung cancer at the ripe old age of 96. Benson was in the office, hard at work the day she died.

Later in life, she traveled the world, making many trips to Central America “traversing the jungle in a Jeep, canoeing down rivers, visiting Mayan sites, and witnessing archaeological excavations.” She went on to publish numerous other books and series, some under pseudonyms and some under her own name. A personal favorite was another girl detective named Penny Parker, who was, in Benson’s estimation, more independent and more of a go-getter than Nancy Drew–in other words, more like her writer. When Stratemeyer’s daughters took over the Nancy Drew series, they rewrote many of Benson’s books, giving Nancy more of a submissive personality.

Though she voiced some displeasure at Nancy Drew being such a focus of her life, according to friends, Benson was always happy to meet the young fans of the series, especially the girls. And she loved autographing copies of the books, as long as they were the ones she had written. "Mrs. Benson is the quintessential feminist of the 20th century, and yet she's almost completely unknown," David Farrah, publisher of Farrah's Guide to Nancy Drew Books and Collectibles told The Times in 1991. But for Benson, ghostwriting Nancy Drew was just another gig. Just before she died, she told a local paper “I always wanted to be a writer from the time I could walk. I had no other thought except that I wanted to write.”

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