Spoiler Alert
Did you ever really love a book and want to read every book by that same author? What about the Nancy Drew series? I can’t imagine how many young girls were turned on to reading because of Nancy Drew.
Notice the author’s name is Carolyn Keene. Well, that was NOT the real author of the Nancy Drew Books. In fact, there was no Carolyn Keene. Edward Stratemeyer, the real author of the Hardy Boys series, developed an outline for a girls’ series with a female detective in 1930. Right before he died, he intrusted his creation to Mildred Wirt Benson who wrote the first 23 of the 30 Nancy Drew novels. If you didn’t already know that bit of trivia, don’t feel behind the times. The information was made public in 1993. You were too busy to notice then!!
Betty Crocker–another fathom of someone’s imagination. This time, General Mills. This was probably not a surprise!!
Abigail Van Buren–Pauline Phillips from Sioux City, Iowa, began the newpapre column in 1956. Her daughter, Jeanne Phillips later took it over. Pauline’s twin sister Ester Lederer was Ann Landers!!
Penelope Ashe–Remember her? She wrote Naked Came the Stranger. Well, not really. The novel was published in early 1969 by a group of Newsday writers as a satire of the sexually explicit books of the period. (Think Valley of the Dolls) About 24 Newsday writers each took a chapter of the book and wrote as poorly as they could. Some of the chapters had to be edited because the writing was deemed TOO good! Who knew the book would become a bestseller AND a movie.
The mastermind behind the ruse was Mike McGrady, who bemoaned the poorly written “trash” that made the bestseller lists. He proved his point that the reading public had ‘dumbed down’ their expections when the book became a hit. He even had his sister protray Penelope Ashe on publicity tours. Toward the end of the year, McGrady and his croonies appeared on The David Frost Show to reveal the truth. After the appearance, the book’s sales went up!!
Information for this blog entry was taken from an article by Jake Rossen that appeared in the March 13, 2022 issue of Mental Floss.