The Vanishing of Carolyn Wells: Investigations into a Forgotten Mystery Author (2024) by Rebecca Rego Barry

When I received a message from Rebecca Rego Barry a few weeks ago about her book, I was definitely intrigued. Prior to this point I had reviewed Carolyn Wells’ The White Alley (1915) and Murder in the Bookshop (1936), as well as her short story ‘The Shakespeare Title-Page Mystery’ (1940), which appeared in a 1951 issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. I was also affair that she was a hugely prolific author, who even bizarrely named one of her mysteries, Raspberry Jam (1919).  But aside from a scrap of information here and a random fact there, I didn’t really know that much about Wells. So, I was interested to find out more.

Synopsis

‘Carolyn Wells (1862–1942) excelled at writing country house and locked-room mysteries for a decade before Agatha Christie entered the scene. In the 1920s, when she was churning out three or more books annually, she was dubbed “about the biggest thing in mystery novels in the US.”

On top of that, Wells wielded her pen in just about every literary genre, producing several immensely popular children’s books and young adult novels; beloved anthologies; and countless stories, prose, and poetry for magazines such as Thrilling Detective, Life, The Saturday Evening Post, Harper’s, and The New Yorker. All told, Wells wrote over 180 books. Some were adapted into silent films, and some became bestsellers. Yet a hundred years later, she has been all but erased from literary history. Why? How?

This investigation takes us on a journey to Rahway, New Jersey, where Wells was born and is buried; to New York City’s Upper West Side, where she spent her final twenty-five years; to the Library of Congress, where Carolyn’s world-class collection of rare books now resides; and to many other public and private collections where exciting discoveries unfolded.

Part biography and part sleuthing narrative, The Vanishing of Carolyn Wells recovers the life and work of a brilliant writer who was considered one of the funniest, most talented women of her time.’

Overall Thoughts

New facts (to me anyways!) begin from the very first page and the introduction commences with Carolyn Wells’ invitation to Mark Twain’s 70^th birthday party in 1905, where she was requested ‘to read an original poem for the occasion.’ Talk about pressure! I found this to be an interesting focal point to start with. One of the things I was looking forward to finding out more about was what experiences shaped Carolyn’s character and therefore her approach to writing. Such experiences include incurring hearing loss due to having scarlet fever as a child.

I knew Wells wrote more than mystery fiction, but I didn’t really know what this other work consisted of, nor the chronology of when she added different genres to her repertoire, so Barry’s book was very helpful in providing this information. Wells’ writing started out in topical poems and comic verse. One example of her early work, mentioned by Barry, that caught my eye was a piece she wrote in 1893 for Vogue, called “A Chromo in Prose”. One of the lines reads thus: ‘the lament of a girl who longs to wear her old gown because “it has pockets in it.”’ I wondered if Rebecca Rego Barry was trying to show a relatable side to Wells, as in her footnote for this line she writes: ‘What do we want? Pockets in dresses! When do we want it? 130 years ago.’

I was struck by how Wells really had to break through the glass ceiling to find publications to submit her work to. In particular she became the first female contributor for The Lark, after persisting with the editor for a year. Barry quotes from her correspondence with publishers and editors, showing she didn’t pull her punches. As the biography unfolds, we get a good sense of who Carolyn Wells was as a person. I think this is often achieved more implicitly by Barry letting Wells’ own words speak for themselves, an approach I liked.

One idea Rebecca Rego Barry puts forward in her book is the idea of Wells as a trendsetter who has not got the recognition she deserved:

‘I can’t help but see her work in this medium, and especially in these two periodicals, as the first of many instances in which she was ahead of the literary curve throughout her life. As we’ll get to in later chapters, it happened again with her innovative young adult series; her mysteries; and even with crossword puzzles. In all of these cases, it feels as if she put in the early work, but the enduring recognition went to the generation that followed, who admittedly improved upon her work but stood on her shoulders, nonetheless.’

I think Barry makes a good case for this with Wells’ series for young adults, which anticipated a rise in the demand for such books in America, ahead of two more well-known series featuring Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys.

Patty in Paris by Carolyn Wells

Another factor Barry suggests affected Wells’ literary legacy is that she wrote across many different genres. This biography really shows the wide range of material Carolyn Wells wrote and published, with chapter 3 for example, considering Wells’ work as a humourist. Again, we see Wells going against the grain, having to deal with the prejudiced idea that women couldn’t be funny. Examples of Wells’ writing in this sphere are included, and whilst some of it is perhaps not that comic now, she does have her moments, where her comedy still rings true today:

 ‘What is a publisher?

A man who is blamed if a book

doesn’t sell, and ignored if it does.

[…]

What makes a book a phenomenal success?

Much bad, much pad, and much ad.’

‘A Primer of Literature’ (1905)

Given her love of comedy it did not surprise me to find out that Wells wrote several parodies. For instance, Abeniki Caldwell (1902) was a parody of historical romances. In addition, it transpires that she also penned ‘a few Arthur Conan Doyle pastiches’:

 ‘The Adventure of the “Mona Lisa”’ and ‘The Adventure of the Clothes-Line’ were both published in The Century, in 1912 and 1915, respectively. In them, Carolyn imagined Holmes and Watson as part of a “Society of Infallible Detectives” with other fictional detectives M. Lecoq (creation of Emile Gaboriau), M. Dupin (Edgar Allan Poe), A. J. Raffles (E. W. Hornung), and Arsene Lupin (Maurice Leblanc).

My interest was definitely piqued with this summary. I found it helpful to read about Carolyn’s background in humour and nonsense verse and compiling anthologies of such, as I think it might have shaped her as a mystery writer and how she approached that genre. A question I am still mulling over is whether this writing background aided or hindered her as a mystery writer.

Early in her book, Rebecca Rego Barry states that her work on Carolyn is also about ‘consider[ing]’ the ‘important question: who gets remembered?’ One way this question is unpacked in the rest of the biography is by looking at the factors which contributed to Wells becoming a more overlooked author, such as a lack of a central archive of her papers. Moreover, throughout the book Barry engages with the opinion that Wells became less well remembered because she wrote too much, and consequently the quality of her work diminished. It is good to widen the discussion beyond this point, because as Barry points out:

‘Modern readers rarely agree on which of Carolyn’s books are good or bad, which is all subjective and inconsequential anyways. What matters is including her in the conversation in a meaningful way, as someone whose contribution to the genre was inarguably vast.’

Nevertheless, at one stage Wells’ writing schedule consisted of producing 4 mystery novels a year plus other publications and I don’t think the effect this speed of production would have had on writing quality is fully explored. Wells’ rate of publication is not unique though, as Dorothy L. Sayers was not keen on overproduction, remarking in one of her reviews of an Anthony Gilbert mystery, that: ‘there are many reasons which may prompt an author to produce books at this rate [3 books in one year], ranging from hyper-activity of the thyroid to the grim menace of rates and taxes.’ Barry does mention though an interesting snippet from one of Wells’ letters to Lippincott in 1922 ‘Do not send me the page proofs of Feathers Left Around. I never read page proofs of my books.’ I felt this shined a light on the editing that may or may not have occurred for Wells’ mysteries.

G-Men: Carolyn Wells’ Fascinating Mystery Card Game – 1936. This is “a game of intense interest, for four players, in which the capture of the PUBLIC ENEMY is a thrilling objective.’ Barry suggests this is evidence that Wells was ‘famous enough that Milton Bradley licensed her name for a game.’ I am aware that in 1935 The Crime Club Card Game created by Peter Cheyney was released and I wondered if that influenced the creation of G-Men.

Because Barry works through Wells’ life chronologically and therefore her career as a writer, I was most interested to note how the critics and reviewers of the time responded to her mysteries and how this changed over time. I was more familiar with reviews of her later detective stories. For example, The Saturday Review said that The Killer (1938) had a ‘multiplicity of nieces, nephews etc.,’ which ‘confuses plot – author, too – but tale has typical Wellsian finish suspense and ebulliency.’ They summed it up as ‘Wells No. 48’ which sounds like a reference to her prolificity. Todd Downing also reviewed several of her novels for the Daily Oklahoman. Of The Umbrella Murder (1931), he said it was ‘by no means the worst of Miss Wells’ imposing list of mysteries.’ Curtis Evans, who edited a collection of Todd Downing’s reviews wrote that in his review of The Clue of the Eyelash (1933) Downing ‘continues to have a pleasant time gently mocking the mystery novels of Carolyn Wells’. This mockery seems to be centred on the stock character types she used. Furthermore, there are also reviews in which Wells is damned with faint praise. When reviewing In the Tiger’s Case (1934) Downing concluded that ‘Wells fans (and there are lots of them) will like it.’ Similarly in his review for Eyes in the Wall (1934) he briefly says, ‘Wells fans will like it.’

Based on reviews like this it was easy for me to make the assumption that this was how her mysteries were always seen, but Barry’s biography shows this is not the case. In particular the reviews for her books from the 1910s shower a lot of praise. This left me wondering whether one of the reasons for Wells’ decline in cultural memory was that by the 1930s her style of mystery writing was falling out fashion. Despite anticipating many other literary trends, perhaps in this area she did not move with the times. Barry explores Wells’ approach to writing detective stories in several ways, but I enjoyed reading about Carolyn’s how-to-guide, The Technique of the Mystery Story (1913), which she impressively wrote after having pblished less than half a dozen mystery novels. Rebecca Rego Barry notes that Wells’

‘[…] clarifies her opinion on mechanism versus character when she writes that a detective story “sets a stirring mental exercise, with just enough of the complex background of life to distinguish it from a problem in mathematics.” A good mystery – like a good poem or good puzzle – is mechanical, she seems to say, forget the rest.’

This to me suggests a reason why her books did not hold up so well over time, as many of the best remembered mysteries from the early to mid-20^th century are ones with strong characterisation. The Technique of the Mystery Story also includes Carolyn Wells’ comments on market forces and how, as Barry puts it, they ‘shape not only her work but the genre as a whole.’ Market forces seem to be a key reason behind Wells putting romance in her mysteries and populating them with upper class characters. However, I am not sure the preferences of the market forces remained fixed and to me the 20s and 30s show a shift, a shift Wells perhaps did not entirely make. Wells was savvy enough to jump into new literary markets and even into the world of film, so I remain curious as to why she did not adapt in this arena.

As I was reading this biography I was put in mind of another author, Arthur B. Reeves. He was very successful during the 1910s but by 1940s, his fame was a distant memory. His sleuth, Craig Kennedy, was called ‘the American Sherlock Holmes’, and like Wells (whose work with the film industry is explored in chapter 6 of Barry’s book) Reeves’ work was often adapted into silent films. Yet his heyday was limited. Howard Haycraft in Murder for Pleasure (1941) wrote:

‘For older readers the Kennedy name still holds nostalgically pleasant memories; to the younger generation it will mean nothing at all. It is to be doubted if any other fictional sleuth, of similar temporal prominence, has fallen so completely into limbo.’

Haycraft posits the following reason for this: ‘Kennedy was cast as a scientific detective’ and ‘his “science,” as some one has remarked, was largely the ephemeral pseudo-science of the “Sunday Supplements”. It was Reeves’ inclusion of topical technology and scientific ideas which ‘so inescapably “dated”’ the Craig Kennedy stories. Haycraft concludes that the datedness of ‘their subject matter’ meant they became ‘so nearly forgotten today [i.e. the 1940s], that it is easy to underestimate their contemporary importance.’ This left me wondering: Did Wells become dated and therefore forgotten? I am not thinking dated by the inclusion of technology, but by her choice of settings and social milieus or by her approach to writing mystery stories.

In 1917 Barry informs us that the Tampa Tribune wrote that ‘The Carolyn Wells detective stories are as much in demand by women as by men […]’. By the 1930s Downing was suggesting that Wells’ mysteries would only appeal to existent fans, who are already invested in her series. This to me feels like a shift. Yet I found Barry’s response to the notion Carolyn’s work was starting to be seen as old fashioned, defensive:

‘Other reviewers pointed out that Carolyn’s books were beginning to feel old-fashioned. No surprise there. She was pushing eighty, and her health was precarious […] her world had shrunk to the size of her apartment, and her social life consisted of her maid, a few neighbours, and her brother’s family […] What could she do but write? Whether the quality or reputation of her novels had dropped off, or if that’s just our contemporary impression […] she continued to write, because her goals had always been to entertain, amuse, and earn a living.’

The idea of the quality dropping off, is not ‘just our contemporary impression’ as contemporary critical reviews from the 1930s voice it.

Barry also considers the prejudice against prolific and genre-focused authors:

‘This is how, over time, we have tended to ensure the longevity of the “literary” at the expense of the popular, affirming the opinion of the minority (intelligentsia) instead of the majority (ordinary readers), which is one of the reasons why authors as prolific and popular as Carolyn were so easily erased.’

I think a more nuanced argument needs to be combined with this idea as other authors such as John Creasey and Edgar Wallace did not get so erased and it would be simplistic to say that this was solely because they were men rather than women, as that pattern does fit for many other overlooked authors such as Gerald Verner. Later in the biography Barry mentions some obstacles hindering the preservation of Wells’ literary legacy, but I felt they needed to be married up with this earlier idea, as they are significant obstacles. For example, there was a lack of paperback editions of her mysteries during her lifetime and in the decades following her death there was no drive from those who inherited her copyright and royalties to push for reprints. No reprints result in a lack of availability and that in turn makes it easier to forget a writer.

In 1940 Carolyn Wells took part in a radio mystery game programme called “Murder Will Out” with journalist Fulton Oursler a.k.a. Anthony Abbot. It does seem to be possible to purchase a copy of a couple of these programmes via this link: https://www.otrcat.com/p/murder-will-out

Barry’s book covers other aspects of Carolyn Wells’ life including her hobby as a book collector. This is discussed near the end of the biography, but it is also its starting point, as it is through one of Wells’ book plates (pasted into a book by a different author), that Rebecca Rego Barry first encountered her. Moreover, Barry’s journey towards deciding to write this biography is also testament to the importance of classic crime reprints, as she only made the connection that the Wells on the bookplate was also Wells’ the crime writer due to the Detective Crime Club Classic reprint of Murder in the Bookshop.

I would say Barry’s writing style is accessible, although at times I think the style becomes a little too informal. For example, the author refers to Gelett Burgess as Wells’ ‘bestie’ and in another footnote she writes: ‘The guy who wrote that later became her BFF and longtime collaborator. Go figure.’ This is also the first time I have seen a footnote solely comprised of an emoji. But this is a matter of reading preference, and I don’t think it particularly affects the reading experience. It is just occasionally jarring, for this British reader at least. Perhaps this is how the biography genre is evolving in America, trying to reach a wider audience. At the end of the day though this is much better than a biography which is too academic.

This biography is not just a repository of information about Carolyn Wells and her work, as it also shows the journey Rebecca Rego Barry took to find her research material. I enjoyed seeing the author chart her researching highs and lows, although occasionally this leads to some irrelevant details involving practicalities. I think Barry made good use of visual research such as photographs, letters, and posters, as that helped to cement the points the author was making, such as the public persona Carolyn created for herself. It was also pleasing to see two of my fellow bloggers mentioned, Curtis Evans and John Norris.   

One piece of primary research which particularly interested me was Wells’ own memoir which she published in 1937. I liked how the author evaluated this material, considering what Wells prioritises in her memoir and what she leaves unsaid and how this is influenced by her personality. Barry writes:

‘[…] but the quirky, nonlinear collection of her favourite memories and anecdotes generally eschews the personal in favour of the professional. Her family history merits scant attention; her other siblings for example, go unnamed […]’

Yet interestingly she was quite a name dropper. I never knew she was good friends with Theodore Roosevelt and his wife! Nor did I realise Wells was against the campaign for women to gain the vote. Yet it was good Barry felt comfortable discussing this side of her character. With a book like this there are so many new pieces of information, but one which I think will stick in my mind (as the owner of three hens) has to be: ‘At seven, Carolyn won two bantam roosters at a spelling bee and tried to keep them in her bedroom, prompting her mother to lament her little genius’s lack of common sense.’

I think I would have preferred more of a conclusion, as I did turn the page and was surprised that I had come to the end of the book. Perhaps it needed to draw together more closely the reasons for Carolyn Wells’ literary legacy being overlooked. Nevertheless, it is evident to see the depth of research Rebecca Rego Barry did and it was a book I was easily able to read in chunks over a 24-hour period, which is not something I can do with all my non-fiction reads. If you want to find out more about Carolyn Wells then I would definitely recommend reading this book, which comes out in the USA on the 13^th February and on the 28^th March in the UK.

Rating: 4.25/5

Source: Review Copy (Post Hill Press)