Daly, Maureen 1921-2006

(Maureen Patricia Daly McGivern)

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for SATA sketch: Born March 15, 1921, in Castlecaufield, County Tyrone, Ulster, Ireland; died of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, September 25, 2006, in Palm Desert, CA. Journalist and author. Daly was best known for her groundbreaking 1942 novel Seventeenth Summer, which served as a foundation for the young-adult fiction genre. Although she was born in northern Ireland, her family moved to America when she was just two years old. She was interested in journalism and fiction writing at a young age, and she had published short stories by the age of fourteen. Her gift became evident when her story "Sixteen" won the O. Henry Award in 1938. While attending Rosary College, she wrote a syndicated teenage advice column. It was while she was still a college student that she published Seventeenth Summer, a work about adolescent love that won the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award and subsequently won distinction as the first young-adult novel. After graduating with a B.A. in 1942, Daly was a police reporter and columnist for the Chicago Tribune and a reporter for the Chicago City News Bureau, as well. These high-pressure jobs did not suit her temperament well, though, and in 1944 she joined the Ladies' Home Journal staff as an associate editor. In 1946, she married William McGivern, who would become a successful novelist and screenwriter, and left editing three years later. She and her family lived in Europe and traveled through Africa during much of the 1950s. Upon returning home, Daly went back to work, this time as an editorial consultant for the Saturday Evening Post from 1960 to 1969. Her fashion reporting earned her a Gimbel Fashion Award in 1962. During the 1960s, she released the young-adult story collection Sixteen and Other Stories (1961), edited other young-adult collections, and also published children's books such as Patrick Visits the Zoo (1963), Rosie, the Dancing Elephant (1967), and the nonfiction book Spain: Wonderland of Contrasts (1965). Having moved to Palm Springs, California, in the 1970s, Daly did not return to journalism until 1987, when she was hired as a reporter and columnist for the Desert Sun. Her last young-adult novels were Acts of Love (1986) and First a Dream (1990).

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Chicago Tribune, October 1, 2006, section 4, p. 6.

New York Times, September 29, 2006, p. C12.

Washington Post, September 30, 2006, p. B13.