Harriet Stratemeyer Adams was an American juvenile book packager, children's novelist, and publisher who was responsible for some 200 books over her literary career. She wrote the plot outlines for many books in the Nancy Drew series, using characters invented by her father, Edward Stratemeyer. Adams also oversaw other ghostwriters who wrote for these and many other series as a part of the Stratemeyer Syndicate, and rewrote many of the novels to update them starting in the late 1950s.
Harriet Adams
Nancy Drew is a fictional character appearing in several mystery book series, movies, video games, and a TV show as a teenage amateur sleuth. The books are ghostwritten by a number of authors and published under the collective pseudonym Carolyn Keene. Created by the publisher Edward Stratemeyer as the female counterpart to his Hardy Boys series, the character first appeared in 1930 in the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories series, which lasted until 2003 and consisted of 175 novels.
Cover of the 1953 version of The Secret of the Old Clock, the first Nancy Drew mystery
Edward Stratemeyer conceived the character and wrote plot outlines but hired Mildred Wirt Benson to ghostwrite the first volumes in the series under the pseudonym Carolyn Keene.
The Nancy Drew Files showcased a more mature character version and romance elements, as seen on the cover of Hit and Run Holiday (1986). Here, Nancy is in swimwear, in proximity to an attractive young man rather than a clue.
Nancy is shown in danger on the cover of The Case of the Vanishing Veil (1988) and other covers from the 1980s. Unlike in earlier covers from the series, she is not completely in control of the situation.
