Editor's Note

This special issue of The Lion and the Unicorn has its origins in a project begun at the University of Iowa two years ago. In 1992, the university's School of Journalism voted to induct into its Hall of Fame the first woman to earn a master's degree there, Iowa native Mildred Augustine Wirt Benson.¹ In addition to her long and impressive career as a journalist—66 years after she graduated from Iowa, Benson still writes a weekly column for the Toledo Blade —Mildred Benson wrote 23 of the first 30 Nancy Drew books; she was, in fact, the first "Carolyn Keene."

When this information went "over the wires" the School of Journalism was innundated with calls from people who wanted to talk about Nancy. The callers, mostly women, all had stories to tell about how instrumental Nancy had been in their lives and about how she had inspired, comforted, entertained them through their childhoods and, for a surprising number of women, well into adulthood. In the words of journalism professor Carolyn Stewart Dyer, "in journalistic terms, there seemed to be a story in this phenomenon," and she began to dig into it. Searching data bases for references to Nancy Drew in news sources, Professor Dyer turned up hundreds of stories, from sports articles to business reports. She discovered an industry that has sold more than 80 million books over 64 years and a fictional heroine turned cultural icon that has taken various guises—as star of stage plays, television, and film (Nancy has even made an appearance as a category on the television game show Jeopardy! ).

Mostly though, Dyer uncovered stories by people for whom Nancy Drew is not just a dim childhood memory but a lived experience. One news story related the harrowing experience of a 10-year-old girl who had been abducted and locked in the trunk of a car. She escaped by dismantling the taillight and squeezing through the tiny space. When the police asked her how she thought of that solution, she replied that she just tried to think like Nancy Drew. Other accounts, while not so dramatic, are similar in tone; something about Nancy Drew has encouraged readers to overcome impediments and to make brave career choices and changes in their lives. Dyer also discovered unsolved mysteries and not a small amount of intrigue surrounding the authorship and production of the Nancy Drew books. She concluded a national conference was merited.

That conference took place in April 1993 and was by any measure an extraordinary event. The "Nancy Drew Conference" attracted an audience of nearly 500 people ranging in age from 4 to 90 and representing groups as diverse as book collectors, librarians, and teachers; lawyers and journalists; students; and, of course, scholars, representing an equally varied group, from the fields of American studies, children's literature, English literature, history, library science, mass communication, and women's studies. The event also attracted more national news coverage than any other University of Iowa event in history (other than Rose Bowl appearances)—The New York Times put the story on their front page, and, on the opening night of the conference, Mildred Benson was the featured "person of the week" on ABC's evening news. The conference has also inspired some of the essays in this issue and, we hope, more to come.

I was delighted to sign on to the conference planning committee as resident children's literature expert. Perhaps more than other steering committee members I was in a position to appreciate the recognition about to be given to a facet of our field that is still much underrepresented. I now find myself in the position of trying to evaluate the meaning of the passionate interest the conference generated.

It is surprising that a publishing enterprise as successful and culturally powerful as the syndicate that produced Nancy Drew and scores of other series books has been so little studied. The sheer magnitude of the economic success and the cultural impact of the Stratemeyer Syndicate's series books should have generated more than the few studies that exist.² There are material...