Like many literary genres, girl detectives fiction evolved gradually, seemingly a convergence of detective novels and the emergence of series books marketed toward children, which both developed during the mid-19th century. The first female sleuths in fiction appeared in the 1860s: Andrew Forrester’s The Female Detective and W.S. Hayward’s Revelations of a Lady Detective. Both novels predate Sherlock Holmes.

Some of the earliest examples of books featuring young female characters solving mysteries include Anna Katherine Green’s 1915 novel The Golden Slipper and Other Problems for Violet Strange, The Daring Twins: A Story for Young Folk (1911), its sequel Phoebe Daring (1912), and The Bluebird Books series (1916-1924), all by L. Frank Baum—the author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz—writing under the pseudonym Edith Van Dyne.

Nancy Drew, the world’s most famous girl detective, burst onto the scene in 1930 with The Secret of the Old Clock and has since starred in hundreds of books, several feature films, TV series, and video games. The character was created by Edward Stratemeyer, founder of the Stratemeyer Syndicate publishing company, who also created the Hardy Boys and wished to market a similar series to girls. As with other Stratemeyer Syndicate books, Edward Stratemeyer (and later his daughter, Harriet Stratemeyer Adams, who took over the company after his death) hired various ghostwriters to pen the series, all under the pseudonym “Carolyn Keene,” paying them a flat fee to draft a fleshed-out novel from a three-page outline and character sketch. Most notably, journalist Mildred Wirt Benson is known to have written 23 of the original 30 Nancy Drew books.

Nancy Drew’s immediate success and popularity drove demand for other girl detectives series books. Featured in the Anita Avery collection, in addition to Nancy Drew, are the Judy Bolton mystery series (1932-1967), Cherry Ames (1943-1968), Vicki Barr (1947-1964), the Dana Girls (1934-1979), and Trixie Belden (1948-1986).

Margaret Sutton, born Rachel Irene Beebe in 1903 in Potter County, Pennsylvania, was the author of numerous childrens’ books and works of juvenile fiction. She is best known as the author of the Judy Bolton mystery series. She graduated from Rochester Business Institute in 1920 and worked as a stenographer and in the printing industry before commencing her writing career. In 1924 she married William Henry Sutton, with whom she had five children. A decade after his death in 1965, Sutton married Everett Hunting and officially took the name Margaret S. Hunting.

From 1932-1967, Sutton wrote 38 volumes of the Judy Bolton mystery series, beginning with The Vanishing Shadow. Published by Grosset & Dunlap, it remains the longest running single-authored juvenile series, with over five million copies sold. The series struggled in later years, however, which Sutton believed was the result of Grosset & Dunlap caving to pressure from the Stratemeyer Syndicate, the publishing company behind the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys series. She wrote, “You may ask why Judy went out of print and Nancy Drew didn’t. The answer is simple. Because Nancy Drew was written by the Stratemeyer Syndicate…the company had more power than a single author and were able to influence the publishers more. Thus Judy was beginning to be phased out in favor of Nancy as early as 1960. The books were no longer advertised and distributed as well as the syndicate books. But they were loved, and still are, by readers who still collect them” (see Box 1, Folder 3).

Sutton died in 2001 in Lockhaven, Pennsylvania. Her books still enjoy a dedicated fanbase, and her hometown, Coudersport, celebrates her legacy with the Judy Bolton Days festival, held annually in October.