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Duley, Margaret

Main entryDuley, Margaret
Birth placeSt. John's, Newfoundland
Birth date27 September 1894
Death placeSt. John's, Newfoundland
Death date22 March 1968
Identifier0270
Birth nameMargaret Iris Duley
Marital statussingle
Religious affiliationMethodist; Theosophist
Paid workPublicity director, Red Cross; broadcasting; researcher; writer (CBC)
BiographyNewfoundland's first internationally recognized writer, Margaret Iris Duley (1894-1968), grew up in St. John's in the family of a well-off jewellery merchant. She attended the local Methodist College but preferred acting, which she studied for a year in London at the Royal Academy of Drama and Elocution just before the outbreak of the First World War. During this time she was introduced to Buddhism and Theosophy, which led to a life-long attraction to spiritualism and mysticism. Back in Newfoundland she became active in the Women's Franchise League and collaborated with her mother, Tryphena (Soper) Duley (1866-1940), on a volume of stories and verse, Margaret writing the verse and her mother the stories. However, Margaret did not write seriously until the family business began to fail in the mid-1930s. She wrote short stories (under pseudonyms) and promotional copy for the Red Cross, continuing as the publicity director until 1953 when she began broadcasting for the CBC and the BBC. Although she lived all her life in St. John's, which provided the inspiration for much of her work, she travelled widely in Europe and North America. Margaret died of Parkinson's Disease in 1968. In 1976, she was designated a "Person of National Historical Significance" by the Government of Canada, and a decade after her death, the Newfoundland Writers' Guild founded a prize in her honour.
TravelNorth Carolina; Montreal; Toronto; England, France, Switzerland, Italy, 1953;
Other notesMargaret had two brothers, Cyril, Nelson, and Lionel, and one sister, Gladys, who died at St. Luke's Home in St. John's.
Honours and awardsSchool prize for short story; Designated a Person of National Historical Significance (1976)
ResidencesSt. John's, Newfoundland (1894-); London, England (1913);
Geographic regionsNewfoundland
Primary genresfiction; non-fiction (history); poetry
BooksA PAIR OF GREY SOCKS (1917) with Tryphena Duley; THE EYES OF THE GULL (1936); COLD PASTORAL (1939); HIGHWAY TO VALOUR (1941); NOVELTY ON EARTH (1942); GREEN AFTERNOON (1944); THE CARIBOU HUT (1949)
PeriodicalsFORTNIGHTLY
OrganizationsLadies Reading Room, Current Events Club
Other artsacting
Father's nameThomas James Duley
Life dates of fatherFebruary 1862, St. Stephen's, Birmingham, England - 13 January 1920; m. 1889
Father's notebusinessman; jeweller
Mother's nameTryphena ("Phenie") Chancey Soper
Life dates of mother25 December 1866, Carbonear, Newfoundland - 20 November 1940
Mother's notehousewife
Biographical referencesCanadian Encyclopedia; FEMINIST COMPANION TO LITERATURE IN ENGLISH (1990); Feder, MARGARET DULEY: NEWFOUNDLAND NOVELIST (St. John's: Harry Cuff, 1983); Canada, Ocean Arrivals (Form 30A), 1919-1924
Bibliographic referencesWatters, CHECKLIST OF CANADIAN LITERATURE...1620-1960 (1970), p. 279, National Union Catalogue, British Library Catalogue
Research referencescomplete
Archival referencesMargaret Duley papers, Archives and Special Collections, Memorial University; correspondence and manuscript of an unpublished story, "Granny Goes the Last Mile," Macmillan papers, McMaster University.
Image creditsImage courtesy of the Margaret Duley Collection, Archives and Special Collections, Queen Elizabeth II Library, Memorial University of Newfoundland.
CopyrightThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/. Please cite Canada's Early Women Writers. SFU Library Digital Collections. Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada. 1980-2014.