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Guid to the the Olive Constant Dougan Collection
D1983.1
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Title: Olive Constant Dougan collection
Dates: 1915-2005
Bulk Dates: 1920-1963
Collection number: D1983.1
Creator:
Dougan, Olive, d. 1962
Collector:
Dougan, Robert
Collection Size:
3.58 linear feet
(8 archives boxes)
Repository:
Claremont Colleges. Library. Ella Strong Denison
Library.
Claremont, California 91711
Abstract: Olive Constant Dougan was an author of children's literature
and poet who lived and worked in the United Kingdom and in Southern California. The
collection at Scripps College contains the author's personal correspondence,
manuscripts, newspaper clippings, magazine articles, photographs, drawings by the
author, and ephemera. The materials in the collection range from 1915 to 2005, with
the bulk of the collection dating from 1920 to 1963.
Physical location: Please consult repository.
Languages: Languages represented in the collection: English
Collection open for research.
All requests for permission to publish must be submitted in writing to Denison
Library.
[Identification of item], Olive Constant Dougan collection. Ella Strong Denison
Library, Libraries of The Claremont Colleges.
Gift of Robert Dougan, 1983.
Biography / Administrative History
Olive Constant Dougan was born Olive Constant McMicken on September 1, 1904, in North
London. She was the eldest of four children. Her mother was Welsh and her father was
Scottish but of English birth. Dougan went on to take a degree at the University of
London School of Librarianship in 1926. Three years later, she married Robert Ormes
Dougan.
During the 1930s and 1940s, Olive C. Dougan began composing poems, short stories and
juvenile fiction novels and submitting these for publication.
Dougan had seven books published during her lifetime, all in England during the 1930s
and 1940s. They were written mainly for preteen girls. Her first book, The Bendon
Bequest: The Story of a Romantic Schoolgirl, was published by Hutchinson and Company
in 1934, but the height of Dougan's fame came during the latter half of the 1940s,
when her fifth and seventh books were published by one of the leading firms in
England, Faber and Faber. She was in high demand at this time.
Sent to Scotland for World War II in 1940, Robert Dougan was joined by his wife in
1941; they lived in Perth until 1952, and then in Dublin, Ireland until 1958, when
Robert became a librarian at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California. While
living in Southern California (Pasadena, and then Sierra Madre after 1953), Olive
Dougan was busy with various manuscripts of stories for juvenile American girls.
None of these appear to have been published before her death on January 4, 1963 of
heart disease. After her death, Robert Dougan collected some of his wife's poems and
had them privately published by the Raccoon Press in Arcadia, California, for
distribution among friends and family. Some of the poems in Shadows and Other Poems
had previously been published in The Poetry Review in 1936.
Adapted from booklet by Charline Wu.
Scope and Content of Collection
The collection contains personal correspondence, manuscripts, newspaper clippings,
magazine articles, photographs, drawings by the author, and ephemera. Letters to and
from Dougan, and Dougan's poetry, are supplemented by condolence letters, the
author's early writings, and articles and quotes collected by the author.
Manuscripts include typescripts of Dougan's poetry from 1933 to 1961, short stories
from 1930 to 1940, and fiction novels from 1960. Not all of these short stories and
poems were published.
The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the
library's online public access catalog.
Dougan, Olive, d. 1962
Children's authors
Women Authors
Children's literature
Women poets
Front matter compiled by Caitlin Silberman, 2005.