The neglected Carolyn Wells.

If you missed the OSU Libraries-sponsored presentation by Rebecca Rego Barry on poet, humorist, children's writer, and mystery author Carolyn Wells (1862–1942), the subject of her new book The Vanishing of Carolyn Wells, you now can see the video of the presentation. Wells was the creator of detective Fleming Stone, her mystery The Clue (1909) is on the Haycraft-Queen Cornerstone list of essential mysteries, and her Sherlock Holmes pastiche "The Adventure of the Clothes-line" (1915) is well known in Sherlockian circles. 

Lou and Herbert Hoover, mystery fans.

On "Hoover Heads," the blog of the Herbert Hoover Library and Museum, Thomas F. Schwartz has written a series of posts on First Lady Lou Henry Hoover and President Herbert Hoover as mystery fans. 

• The friendship of the Hoovers with author Mary Roberts Rinehart.
  
  
• Mystery writers read by the Hoovers, pt 1. (Margery Allingham, Dashiell Hammett, Ellery Queen, Dorothy L. Sayers, S. S. Van Dine)
  
  
• Mystery writers read by the Hoovers, pt 2. (The Detection Club)
  
  
• Mystery writers read by the Hoovers, pt 3. (Margery Allingham, Dashiell Hammett)
  
  
• Mystery writers read by the Hoovers, pt. 4. (Lawrence Saunders, aka John Burton Davis and Clare Ogden Davis; Harry Stephen Keeler)
  
  
  
• Mystery writers read by the Hoovers, pt. 5. (Carolyn Wells)
  
  
• Mystery writers read by the Hoovers, pt. 6. (Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers)
  
  
• Mystery writers read by the Hoovers, pt. 7. (Freeman Wills Crofts, Robin Forsythe)
  
  
• Mystery writers read by the Hoovers, p. 8. (Harry Ashton-Wolfe)

(Photos: Herbert Hoover, Lou Henry Hoover: NYPL)

Carolyn Wells's "A Reader's Lament" (1899).

Carolyn Wells,
ca. 1923

Carolyn Wells's The Clue (1909) appears on the Haycraft-Queen Cornerstone list of essential mysteries, and she's also known for her Sherlock Holmes pastiches. In addition, she wrote poetry, such as the following "Reader's Lament" (The Bookman, Mar. 1899, p. 22):

I cannot read the old books
I read long years ago;
Eliot, Dickens, Thackeray,
Bulwer and Scott and Poe.
Marryat's yarns of sailor life,
And Hugo's tales of crime; —
I cannot read the old books,
Because I haven't time.

I love the dear old stories,
My thoughts to them will stray;
But still one must keep posted on
The writers of to-day.
My desk is piled with latest books
I'm striving to despatch;
But ere I've finished all of them,
There'll be another batch.

Hope's new one isn't opened yet,
I've not read James's last;
And Howells is so prolific now,
And Crawford writes so fast.
Evelyn Innes I must skim,
O'er Helbeck I must pore;
The Day's Work I'll enjoy, although
I've read the tales before.

And then there is The King's Jackal,
The Gadfly, Caleb West,
Silence, The Forest Lovers, and—
I can't name all the rest.
I'll try to keep up with the times,
But, oh, I hope that I
May read my David Copperfield
Once more before I die.

Bibliomysteries.

Over on the Private Library blog, there's an interesting two-part discussion on collecting bibliomysteries—that is, those mysteries that center on books and the book world. Mixed in with the inevitable mentions of Raymond Chandler, Rex Stout, and John Dunning are some unexpected books, such as Carolyn Wells's Murder in the Bookshop (1936).

(Hat tip to PhiloBiblos)

Scrapbooks of mystery author Carolyn Wells.

Room 26 Cabinet of Curiosities of Yale's Beinecke Library gives us a peek into the appealing scrapbooks of mystery author and humorist Carolyn Wells (1869?–1942); her novel The Clue (1909) appears on the Haycraft-Queen Cornerstone list. She was married to Hadwin Houghton, son of publisher Bernard Houghton (of Houghton Mifflin). Her Sherlock Holmes parody "The Adventure of the Clothes-Line" (1915) can be found in The Game Is Afoot (ed. Marvin Kaye, 1994).

In The Technique of the Mystery Story (1913), Wells wrote:

The detective story has been called "ingenious but somewhat mechanical." Here the stigma lies in the "but." The detective story is ingenious and mechanical. On these two commandments hang all the laws of mystery fiction writing. Also ingenious and mechanical are the Fixed Forms of verse. Who denies the beauty and art of sonnets and rondeaux, and even sestinas, because they are ingenious and mechanical? (15)