# Carolyn Wells

Carolyn Wells (June 18, 1862 — March 26, 1942) was an American mystery author and poet.

## Life and career

Born in Rahway, New Jersey, she was the daughter of William Edmund and Anna Potter Wells (nee Woodruff).
After finishing school, she worked as a librarian for the Rahway Library Association. Her first book, At the Sign of the Sphinx (1896), was a collection of literary charades. Her next publications were The Jingle Book and The Story of Betty (1899), followed by a book of verse entitled Idle Idyls (1900). After 1900, Wells wrote numerous novels and collections of poetry.
Carolyn Wells wrote a total 170 books. During the first ten years of her career, she concentrated on poetry, humor, and children's books. According to her autobiography, The Rest of My Life (1937), she heard That Affair Next Door (1897), one of Anna Katharine Green's mystery novels, being read aloud and was immediately captivated by the unraveling of the puzzle. From that point onward, she devoted herself to the mystery genre. Among the most famous of her mystery novels were the Fleming Stone Detective Stories which—according to Allen J. Hubin's Crime Fiction IV: A Comprehensive Bibliography, 1749–2000 (2003)—number 61 titles. Wells's The Clue (1909) is on the Haycraft-Queen Cornerstone list of essential mysteries. She was also the first to conduct a (brief, in this case) annual series devoted to the best short crime fiction of the previous year in the U.S., beginning with The Best American Mystery Stories of the Year (1931) (though others had begun a similar British series in 1929).
In addition to books, Wells also wrote for newspapers. Her poetry accompanies the work of some of the leading lights in illustration and cartooning, often in the form of Sunday magazine cover features that formed continuing narratives from week to week. Her first known illustrated newspaper work is a two part series titled Animal Alphabet, illustrated by William F. Marriner, which appeared in the Sunday comics section of the New York World. Many additional series ensued over the years, including the bizarre classic Adventures of Lovely Lilly (New York Herald, 1906–07). The last series she penned was Flossy Frills Helps Out (American Weekly, 1942), which appeared after her death.
In 1918 then aged 55, she married Hadwin Houghton (1855-1919). Although it sounds both plausible and romantic, he was not a direct descendent of H.O. Houghton, a founder of the Houghton-Mifflin publishing empire. However, Houghton was a distant cousin and his father, Moses Barnard Houghton was a senior member of the firm. Houghton was a very successful employee of Valentine & Company, a varnish and paint company now known as Valspar. He died in 1919 and her mother died two weeks after.
Wells died at the Flower Fifth Avenue Hospital in New York City in 1942. She is buried in the Rahway Cemetery in Rahway, NJ with her husband, parents, and two siblings.
Wells possessed an impressive collection of volumes of poetry by others. She bequeathed her collection of Walt Whitman poetry, said to be one of the most important of its kind for its completeness and rarity, to the Library of Congress.
In 2024, the first-ever biography of Wells, Rebecca Rego Barry's The Vanishing of Carolyn Wells, was published.