Maureen Daly
Maureen Daly was an influential Irish-American writer born on March 15, 1921, in County Tyrone, Ireland, and later emigrated to Wisconsin with her family. Demonstrating a passion for writing from a young age, she gained recognition with her story "Sixteen," which won a prestigious contest when she was just fifteen. Daly is best known for her debut novel, *Seventeenth Summer*, published in 1942, which is often celebrated as the first young adult novel and has sold over a million copies. Throughout her career, she worked as a journalist, contributing to the Chicago Tribune and serving as an associate editor for the *Ladies Home Journal*. Daly wrote numerous books across various genres, including young adult fiction and nonfiction, and even collaborated with her husband on family memoirs. She also ventured into television and film, writing screenplays and scripts. Despite facing personal tragedies, including the deaths of her husband and daughter, Daly continued to write until her later years, leaving a significant legacy in children's and young adult literature. Her work has been translated into over twenty languages and continues to resonate with readers today.
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Maureen Daly
Writer
- Born: March 15, 1921
- Birthplace: Castlecaufield, County Tyrone, Ulster, Ireland
- Died: September 16, 2006
- Place of death: Palm Desert, California
Biography
Maureen Patricia Daly was born on March 15, 1921, in Castlecaufield, County Tyrone, Ulster, Ireland, one of four daughters. Her parents were Joseph Daly, a salesman, and Margaret Mellon-Kelly Daly. When she was an infant, the family emigrated to Wisconsin. From an early age, Daly was a writer and a reader. A story she submitted to a Scholastic magazine writing contest at fifteen won third prize; the next year, her short story “Sixteen” won first prize. Taking over the coal bin in the basement of her family’s home as her writing studio, Daly announced that she was going to be a writer.
Daly graduated from Rosary College in 1942, the year she published her first and most significant novel, Seventeenth Summer, which she had begun when she herself was only seventeen. The novel tells the story of a boy and girl in a small Wisconsin town who fall in love for the first time.
Daly went from college to the police beat at the Chicago Tribune, where daily reporting sharpened her writing skills. She also wrote reviews and an advice column for teens. Her second book was a collection of her advice columns, Smarter and Smoother: A Handbook on How to Be That Way. Daly left the paper in 1948, when she married mystery writer William P. McGivern. The couple had two children, Megan and Patrick.
The family moved to Philadelphia in 1948, and Daly became associate editor of the Ladies Home Journal. In the 1950’s, they moved to Europe, and Daly and McGivern traveled and wrote. Daly had continued to use her given name professionally, with one exception: In 1957, she and her husband cowrote a memoir of the family’s travels, Mention My Name in Mombasa: The Unscheduled Adventures of an American Family Abroad, and published it under the names Maureen Daly McGivern and William P. McGivern. From 1960 to 1969, she consulted from Europe for The Saturday Evening Post, published dozens of articles in popular magazines, and wrote several more books, including a series of picture books featuring a boy named Patrick. By the end of the 1960’s, Daly had published twenty books of fiction and nonfiction for children, young adults, and adults.
When the children were teenagers, the family returned to the United States, settling on a farm in Pennsylvania before moving to California. Daly and McGivern wrote screenplays and television scripts, including episodes of Kojak. In 1982, McGivern died of cancer, and the couple’s daughter Megan died, also of cancer, months later. Daly finished McGivern’s last mystery novel in 1983, and in 1986 she published another young adult novel of her own, Acts of Love. A year later, she became a restaurant reviewer for the Desert Sun in Palm Desert, California. Her last book was another young adult novel, First a Dream (1990).
Seventeenth Summer sold over a million copies, won the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award, and was made into a 1949 film by Warner Brothers. It is considered by many to be the first young adult novel. The short story “Sixteen” has been included in over three hundred anthologies and translated into more than twenty languages.