Carolyn Wells was an important successor to Anna Katharine Green, the ‘mother’ of American crime fiction, and Wells’s large body of work deserves reappraisal. Her 1913 Technique of the Mystery Story was a milestone in the study of the genre, and even if it were not suffused with her love of Sherlock Holmes, it is profitable reading today. Thank you, Rebecca Rego Barry, for bringing Ms. Wells back into the spotlight!
While The Vanishing of Carolyn Wells is certainly a useful corrective to our often male-dominated literary and cultural histories, it is simultaneously a highly personal work. Composed in the manner of A.J.A. Symons’s classic The Quest for Corvo, Barry makes the book very much an account of herself and how she went about these 'investigations into a forgotten mystery author.'
An engrossing biography that reads like a detective novel. Author Rebecca Rego Barry takes readers on a riveting journey to reveal the extraordinary life of Carolyn Wells, a 20th century mystery writer who penned more than 150 books. This book is a gift to all of us who want to see more women’s legacies reclaimed, nurtured, and shared.
[A]n engrossing journey into Wells’s life and work and a thoughtful examination of why and how bestselling writers like Wells can vanish from our memories.
The Vanishing of Carolyn Wells is a remarkably compelling narrative about this astonishingly prolific author who had great success in numerous genres. While I have never been a great fan of Ms. Wells’s mystery novels, the sprightly and perceptive prose of Rebecca Rego Barry’s worthwhile study has convinced me to give her another try."
It is a pleasure to watch Ms. Barry at work, creating her own detective story and much suspense as she writes to booksellers, examines the inscriptions in Wells’s books strewn around the country, draws on the research of scholars... and interviews a few Wells family members who have remnants of her possessions and a few dim memories of her.
Through her skillful and delightful first-person narration, Rebecca Rego Barry, a bibliophile and rare book expert, unravels the mysteries surrounding Carolyn Wells’s lost legacy. With meticulous research and intriguing insights, Barry offers a gripping portrait of a literary luminary whose impact has been all but erased. A poignant reminder of the transient nature of fame and the enduring power of rediscovery, Wells’s enigmatic disappearance from literary history will captivate you.
★ 03/29/2024
Two tenacious women are featured in this literary study: one is the subject, multifaceted author Carolyn Wells (1862–1942) and the other is the book's author, Barry, who searches worldwide for information about Wells to create this work. In 2011, upon receiving a first edition of Thoreau's Walden, Barry noticed the decorative bookplate indicating the volume was from the library of Carolyn Wells. This led Barry to investigate the life of Wells, a humorist, who began her career publishing nonsense pieces in popular magazines, all while working part-time in a New Jersey library. Barry scours libraries and databases to find documentation of Wells's life, which led to contacting the author's great-niece for interviews. Overall, Barry's persistent research shows how Wells's sheer force of will enabled her to use parody to compete and thrive in a literary field dominated by men, such as Mark Twain, and establish a successful career as a young adult and mystery novelist and film and stage writer. Includes photos (not seen) and notes. VERDICT Recommended for literature and women's history collections as an excellent example of determined and focused accomplishment.—Joyce Sparrow
2023-10-31
The fruit of “a three-year quest to restore the legacy” of a prolific and pioneering mystery writer who’s dropped almost completely from sight.
Love her or hate her, Carolyn Wells (1862-1942) in her time was widely acknowledged as a force to be reckoned with. Her children’s book series rivaled those produced by Edward Stratemeyer’s syndicate of anonymous writers. Her 81 mystery novels, including 61 starring Fleming Stone, account for less than half of her output of over 180 books—novels, verse collections, anthologies, scrapbooks, autograph books, crossword puzzle books, and screenplays—an oeuvre that made another writer wonder, “Is Carolyn Wells a syndicate?” Her nonsense verse cemented her friendship with art critic and poet Gelett Burgess; her take-no-prisoners approach to collecting material by and about Walt Whitman earned the lasting enmity of bibliophile Vincent Starrett; her mysteries were panned by Dashiell Hammett, John Dickson Carr, and, yes, Kirkus Reviews. Sandwiched between the older Anna Katharine Green and the younger Mary Robert Rinehart, Wells lacked the staying power of the second and so far hasn’t been revived as successfully as the first. Barry, author of Rare Books Uncovered, aims to change that by sharing every scrap of information she’s discovered about Wells’ remarkable career, her reception, and theories about why she’s fallen into such neglect. The result is an engaging but often frustratingly incomplete biography repeatedly interrupted by detailed accounts of how the author acquired, or failed to acquire, access to her research materials, both of them interrupted in turn by a series of chatty footnotes confiding in the reader directly. The resulting combination succeeds in bringing Wells back to life, largely through extensive quotations from her light verse, but gives little sense of any or all of those Fleming Stone novels.
Not a definitive biography, but an indispensable first step toward one.
