We also know Mildred Wirt Benson authored or contributed to 23 of the original 30 Nancy Drew mysteries, including The Secret of the Old Clock. Today we know the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories were written and later revised by over a dozen men and women. In addition, authors were required to sign a contract in which they gave up any rights to the work, and maintained the fiction that the popular novels were written by a single person named Carolyn Keene. The book's title page names Carolyn Keene as its author, but the Stratemeyer Syndicate hired several writers to author the Nancy Drew books, paying them a flat fee. While many of the Nancy Drew novels, including The Secret of the Old Clock were re-written and re-released between 19, Special Collections & Archives holds a copy of the 1930 edition of the first book in the series.

Now a best-selling work of children's literature, it is titled The Secret of the Old Clock, and is the first of dozens of novels featuring Nancy, her family, and her friends that make up the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories.

In 1930, a publishing company called the Stratemeyer Syndicate, working with Grosset & Dunlap, published a mystery novel featuring Nancy Drew, a teenage girl detective, as its protagonist.

Nancy drew online free books