Eileen Duggan (1894-1972). Courtesy New Zealand Electronic Poetry Archive.
Eileen May Duggan (21 May 1894 - 10 December 1972) OBE was a New Zealand poet and journalist, from an Irish Roman Catholic family.[1] She worked in Wellington as a journalist, and wrote a weekly article for the New Zealand Tablet for almost 50 years.
Life[]
Youth[]
Duggan was born in Tuamarina (near Blenheim) in Marlborough, the youngest of 4 daughters of John and Julia Duggan. Her parents, both co. Kerry, Ireland, had married in Wellington on 7 October 1885. John was a platelayer on the New Zealand Railways.
Eileen Duggan attended Tuamarina School, from 1901 to 1910, and then Marlborough High School. She taught as a pupil teacher at Tuamarina School from 1912 to 1913, and attended Wellington Teachers Training College from 1914 to 1915.
She studied at Victoria University College, Wellington from 1916, receiving a B.A. in 1916, and an M.A. with 1st class honours in history in 1918, and was awarded the Jacob Joseph Scholarship. Her earliest poems were published in the New Zealand Tablet in 1917.
She taught at Dannevirke High School in 1918, then at Marlborough High School, St Patrick’s College, Wellington, and was an assistant lecturer at Victoria University College for a year.
Soon after her arrival in Wellinngton she published her debut collection of poems, probably in 1921 (although other dates have been proposed: 1920, 1922 or 1924).
She was deeply affected by the death of her sister Evelyn in 1921, and after briefly staying with her other married sister Mary moved about 1925 to the Catholic Girls’ Hostel in Wellington. Her other sister Catherine (or Katherine) had entered the Order of Our Lady of the Missions.
Through her career she published individual poems in various newspapers and journals in New Zealand (The School Journal), Australia (The Bulletin), England (The New English Weekly) and America (America and The Commonweal, both Catholic journals).[2]
In the 1930s she was New Zealand's best-known poet, with an Eileen Duggan Society in America. Her 1937 volume of poems had an introduction by Walter de la Mare. She stopped writing poems about 1951.[3] She wrote some poems on events for the Catholic Church, which treated her at times as an unofficial poet laureate, and a poem when Prime Minister Michael Joseph Savage died.
Some of her poems were anthologised in books of New Zealand poems by Chapman, Bennett and Vincent O’Sullivan, but none of her poems were included in Allen Curnow's influential 1960 Penguin anthology because of a disagreement over selection.
Later life[]
Duggan had continued ill health from a childhood sickness, so decided to give up teaching. Partly for the same reason she decided not to marry in 1918 and in 1940.
She lived in inner-city Wellington in Glencoe Terrace off The Terrace, in a weird canyon in the heart of the city up flights of precipitous stairs.[4]
She supported herself by journalism, with a weekly article in the New Zealand Tablet, writing the women’s page under the pen name of Pippa. Her earliest article appeared in the issue of 7 September 1927, and the last posthumously on 17 January 1973. She also wrote for newspapers like The Dominion of Wellington.
Writing[]
Critical reputation[]
Duggan's reputation declined after her death, from her association with the English Georgian poets and with the inclusion of some of her poems in the 1930 anthology Kowhai Gold, which was rather self-consciously New Zealand.
Recognition[]
She was awarded the Order of the British Empire in 1937 for services to the Dominion, among the earliest writers to be so honored.[5]
In 1942 Prime Minister Peter Fraser, who was a personal friend, got her a small pension.[5]
Publications[]
Poetry[]
- Poems. Dunedin, NZ: New Zealand Tablet, 1921.
- Poems (with introduction by Walter de la Mare). London: George Allen & Unwin, 1937; New York: Macmillan, 1939.
- New Zealand Poems. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1940.
- More Poems. London: George Allen & Unwin / New York: Macmillan, 1951.
- Selected Poems (edited by Peter Whiteford). Wellington: Victoria University Press, 1994.
Non-fiction[]
- Episcopal Diamond Jubilee of His Grace, Archbishop Redwood, S.M., 1874-1934. Wellington, NZ: McKenzie, Thornton, Cooper, 1934.
Juvenile[]
- New Zealand Bird Songs. Wellington: Harry H. Tombs, [1929?]
Edited[]
- Emmett McHardy, Blazing the Trail in the Solomons. Providence, RI: Visitor Printing, 1935.
Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.[6]
See also[]
Eileen Duggan The Tides Run Up The Wairau
References[]
- A Gentle Poet: A portrait of Eileen Duggan O.B.E. by Grace Burgess (1981)
- Eileen Duggan: Selected Poems edited by Peter Whiteford (1994, Victoria University Press, Wellington) ISBN 0-86473-265-1
- A New Zealand Poet for the World in Great Days in New Zealand Writing by Alan Mulgan Chapter 10, pages 90–94 (1962, Reed)
Notes[]
- ↑ Whiteford, Peter. "Eileen May Duggan". Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Ministry for Culture and Heritage. http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/4d23. Retrieved December 2011.
- ↑ Burgess, 68.
- ↑ Whiteford p17
- ↑ Burgess p43, Whiteford p16
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 Bassett, Michael (2000). Tomorrow Comes the Song: A life of Peter Fraser. Auckland: Penguin. p. 141. ISBN 0-14-029793-6.
- ↑ Search results = au:Eileen Duggan, WorldCat, OCLC Online Computer Library Center Inc. Web, Mar. 22, 2014.
External links[]
- Poems
- Books
- Eileen Duggan at amazon.com
- Eileen Duggan at the New Zealand Literature File
- About
- Duggan, Eileen at the New Zealand Book Council
- Duggan, Eileen May in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography
- Eileen Duggan in Kotare by Peter Whiteford (2008)
| This page uses Creative Commons Licensed content from Wikipedia. (view article). (view authors). |
|