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Mildred Augustine Wirt Benson was an American journalist and author of children's books, in particular the earliest Nancy Drew mysteries. Writing under Stratemeyer Syndicate pen name Carolyn Keene from 1929 to 1947, she contributed to 23 of the first 30 originally published Nancy Drew mysteries.
While she wrote scores of books under her own and many other names, she is perhaps best known as one of 28 individuals who helped produce the Nancy Drew books. Edward Stratemeyer hired Mildred Benson in 1926 to assist in expanding his roughly drafted stories in order to satisfy increasing demand for his series.
Benson was born Mildred Augustine in Ladora, Iowa to Lillian and Dr. J. L. Augustine. She married Asa Wirt, who worked for Associated Press, and, after Wirt's death in 1947, married George A. Benson, editor of the Toledo Blade newspaper of Toledo, Ohio three years later; he died in 1959. She earned her degree in English from the University of Iowa in 1925, returned and earned her master's degree in journalism in 1927, the first student to do so there. She worked for 58 years as a journalist, writing a weekly column for the Toledo Blade and continuing to work full-time until a few months before her death, from lung cancer, in 2002 at the age of 96.
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