Microform and Imaging Review

The University of Iowa, first in the nation to offer advanced degrees for creative writing and home of the famed Iowa Writer's Workshop, has a long history of turning out many of America's best-known authors. However, one of the most popular and enduring novelists ever to have graduated from the UI is hardly a household name. Mildred Wirt Benson, under the much more familiar pseudonym Carolyn Keene, wrote the first 23 Nancy Drew mystery novels. The longest-running juvenile fiction series ever, the series has sold over 200 million books, received translation into 25 languages, and inspired adaptation for numerous film and television versions. In 2007, staff of the UI's Digital Library Services department embarked on a digitization project (http://digital.lib.uiowa.edu/mwb) to provide clues to the mysterious author behind the beloved Nancy Drew character.