In honor of Women's History Month, local author Rebecca Rego Barry will discuss rescuing Carolyn Wells--an author whose work in locked-room and country house mysteries pre-dates Agatha Christie's by nearly a decade--from the margins of history. The first biography of one of the “lost ladies” of detective fiction, who wrote more than eighty mysteries and hundreds of other works between the 1890s and the 1940s, The Vanishing of Carolyn Wells  is part archival mystery and part document of significant eras in women's history, from Women's Suffrage to the Roaring 20s.

About the Author:

Rebecca Rego Barry is a writer who lives in New York’s Hudson Valley. Her articles about books, history, and collecting have appeared in Literary Hub, CrimeReads, Atlas Obscura, Smithsonian, The Guardian, Financial Times, and elsewhere. Her first book, Rare Books Uncovered: True Stories of Fascinating Finds in Unlikely Places (2015), developed from her longtime editorship of Fine Books & Collections magazine. She is currently the director of communications at The Raab Collection, a firm that buys and sells historical autographs and documents.  

This project is made possible with funds from the Statewide Community Regrants Program, a regrant program of the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature and administered by Arts Mid-Hudson.