Tracking Margaret Penrose
-
- March
- 9
I was disappointed today to find a rejection notice from Abebooks that “Dorothy Dale’s Strange Discovery” was unavailable. I had my doubts when I ordered it (for some reason I thought the set ended at 10), but if it was available, it would complete the series I began last summer with the unexpected acquisition of “Dorothy Dale, Girl of Today.”
At some point my love affair with Dorothy, who burst on the scene in 1915, may make blog fodder, but in searching around to see if “Strange Discovery” actually exists, I decided to do a little research into Margaret Penrose, the alleged author of the Dorothy Dale series.
Penrose was, not surprising, the pen name of one of the Stratemeyer Syndicate writers (think Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys, although the Dorothy Dale series actually predates those by a few decades). And while I know that Wikipedia is the worst possible source for real information, Penrose was identified there as being Lilian C. Garis (1873-1954).
Apparently, Garis was a reporter for the Newark (N.J.) Evening News around the turn of the last century.
That probably explains why Dorothy lived in a “small upstate New York town” and took train trips into NYC for Christmas shopping and whatnot in the early books. It also explains why the scenes in Dorothy’s father’s small newspaper ring so true.
This entry was posted
on Monday, March 9th, 2009 at 10:38 am by Randi Weiner.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
| 
