An apotheosis of American girlhood, Nancy isn’t quite an everywoman - we can’t all crack a safe or pilot a speedboat - but she is an archetype, just generic enough for readers to imagine themselves in her sensible heels. The Nancy Drew books, which have sold more than 80 million copies, offer a model of femininity that is self-reliant, snappily dressed, capable of catching the baddie in time to make the college dance. In the 1950s, Harriet Stratemeyer Adams, Stratemeyer’s younger daughter and heir to the Stratemeyer Syndicate, took over the series, instilling Nancy with some of her own Wellesley-educated refinement and drive. Benson, who wrote Nancy Drew books off and on for two decades, fleshed out Stratemeyer’s breakneck plot while imbuing Nancy with spunk, valor and an unflagging sense of her own moral rightness - although that rightness occasionally lent itself to burglary.
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