‘The Wrong Girls’ is Proudly Not Much of Anything
By MARIO NAVES
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Carolyn Wells earned a living writing mystery novels, but her poems are always clever and often fun, well metered and well rhymed, whimsical and attention grabbing — most everything, in other words, that one could want for light verse.
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Carolyn Wells (1862–1942) began writing light verse, especially for children, in an era in which many others were doing the same thing. The market was vast, with The New York Sun and nearly all other daily newspapers regularly featuring poetry. But that large market would bring out endless numbers of writers, and with such competition, Wells felt that her work was not receiving much attention — despite her marriage to Hadwin Houghton, heir of the Houghton-Mifflin publishing firm.
In 1897, however, she came across a mystery by Anna Katharine Green (1846–1935), the author of the first successful American detective novel, “The Leavenworth Case” (1878). And like better writers after her — and worse writers, too — she decided that mysteries were the way readers were going. By the time of her death, Wells had published 61 novels about her detective, Fleming Stone.
Her first Stone tale, “The Clue,” is sometimes found on lists of important mysteries, but if it is actually important, that has more to do with the history of the genre than the literary merits of the book. As a mystery writer, Carolyn Wells has faded into the shadows of the unread.
What hasn’t faded, however, or at least shouldn’t fade, is the light verse she set on the back burner while pounding out her detective stories. These poems are always clever and often fun, well metered and well rhymed, whimsical and attention grabbing — most everything, in other words, that one could want for light verse. “If there is nothing on the tree, / ’Tis the Chameleon you see.”
Carolyn Wells (1862–1942) began writing light verse, especially for children, in an era in which many others were doing the same thing. The market was vast, with The New York Sun and nearly all other daily newspapers regularly featuring poetry. But that large market would bring out endless numbers of writers, and with such competition, Wells felt that her work was not receiving much attention — despite her marriage to Hadwin Houghton, heir of the Houghton-Mifflin publishing firm.
In 1897, however, she came across a mystery by Anna Katharine Green (1846–1935), the author of the first successful American detective novel, “The Leavenworth Case” (1878). And like better writers after her — and worse writers, too — she decided that mysteries were the way readers were going. By the time of her death, Wells had published 61 novels about her detective, Fleming Stone.
Her first Stone tale, “The Clue,” is sometimes found on lists of important mysteries, but if it is actually important, that has more to do with the history of the genre than the literary merits of the book. As a mystery writer, Carolyn Wells has faded into the shadows of the unread.
What hasn’t faded, however, or at least shouldn’t fade, is the light verse she set on the back burner while pounding out her detective stories. These poems are always clever and often fun, well metered and well rhymed, whimsical and attention grabbing — most everything, in other words, that one could want for light verse. “If there is nothing on the tree, / ’Tis the Chameleon you see.”
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