author
Irene Elliott Benson
Best remembered for early 20th-century stories about the Camp Fire Girls, this elusive writer created brisk, wholesome adventures centered on friendship, outdoor life, and growing independence.
3 Audiobooks
Ethel Hollister's Second Summer as a Campfire Girl
by Irene Elliott Benson
Campfire Girls' Lake Camp; or, Searching for New Adventures
by Irene Elliott Benson, Stella M. Francis
How Ethel Hollister Became a Campfire Girl
by Irene Elliott Benson
About the author
Irene Elliott Benson was an American writer associated with children's and young adult fiction in the early 1900s. Reliable catalog and public-domain sources link her to a run of Camp Fire Girls books, including How Ethel Hollister Became a Campfire Girl (1912), Ethel Hollister's Second Summer as a Campfire Girl, and later titles such as Camp-Fire Girls' Lake Camp and Camp-Fire Girls' in the Forest.
Her books fit into the larger wave of series fiction written for young readers during the 1910s and 1920s. In Benson's work, the appeal is easy to see: outdoor adventure, teamwork, loyalty, and capable girls learning by doing. That mix helped her stories find a lasting afterlife in library catalogs, reprints, and Project Gutenberg editions.
Very little confirmed biographical detail appears to be widely available about her personal life, which makes the books themselves the clearest introduction to her career. What remains easy to trace is her place in the long-running tradition of Camp Fire Girls fiction for young readers.