Olive Constant Dougan collection, 1915-2005, bulk 1920-1963

Printable guide [HTML]
Request items

Summary

Creators:
Dougan, Olive, d. 1962 and Dougan, Robert
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.
Extent:
3.58 linear feet (8 archives boxes)
Language:
Languages represented in the collection: English
Preferred citation:

[Identification of item], Olive Constant Dougan collection. Ella Strong Denison Library, Libraries of The Claremont Colleges.

Background

Scope and content:

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.

Biographical / historical:

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.

Acquisition information:
Gift of Robert Dougan, 1983.
Processing information:

Front matter compiled by Caitlin Silberman, 2005.

Physical location:
Please consult repository.
Rules or conventions:
Finding aid prepared using Describing Archives: a Content Standard

Access and use

Restrictions:

Collection open for research.

Terms of access:

All requests for permission to publish must be submitted in writing to Denison Library.

Preferred citation:

[Identification of item], Olive Constant Dougan collection. Ella Strong Denison Library, Libraries of The Claremont Colleges.

Location of this collection:
1030 Columbia Avenue, #2031
Claremont, CA 91711, US
Contact:
(909) 607-3941
Denison@scrippscollege.edu
Website