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Carolyn Keene is the pseudonym of the authors of the Nancy Drew mystery series, and also The Dana Girls mystery series, both published by the Stratemeyer Syndicate. Stratemeyer hired writers, including Mildred Benson, to write the novels in this series, who initially were paid only $125 for each book and were required by their contract to give up all rights to the work and to maintain confidentiality. Edward Stratemeyer's daughter, Harriet Adams, also wrote books in the Nancy Drew series under the pseudonym.
Other ghostwriters who used this name to write Nancy Drew mysteries included James Duncan Lawrence, Nancy Axelrod, Priscilla Doll, Charles Strong, Alma Sasse, Wilhelmina Rankin, George Waller Jr., Margaret Scherf, and Susan Wittig Albert.
Leslie McFarlane wrote the first four Dana Girls stories in 1934 and 1935. This series is a feminized version of The Hardy Boys. These volumes were advertised as being written by the author of Nancy Drew, and were promoted heavily on dust jackets for this series. The Dana Girls were later ghostwritten by others, including Mildred Benson and Harriet Adams. The series went out of print for about four years, from 1945 to 1949, and was reintroduced with revised dust jacket art and illustrations at that time. The series stopped production in 1968, was modernized, and reintroduced in 1972. The series was less successful than other Syndicate works, and went out of print permanently in 1981.
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