(1900– ).

Poetess.

A new biography of Duggan, Eileen May appears in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography on this site.

p>Eileen May Duggan was born at Wreys Bush, near Invercargill, on 17 February 1900 and educated at Victoria Univ. College. For a year she taught at Dannevirke High School and lectured in history for a similar period at Victoria University. Since then she has devoted herself to literary work, writing for publications in New Zealand and abroad, and with a modest output of poetry. In 1943 she was made an honorary fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (London). Her poetry is marked by sensitiveness, imagery, and spiritual qualities, yet with a lightness of touch and feeling for language that have set her high among New Zealand poets. Eileen Duggan's publications are Poems (1924); A Pioneer (1929); New Zealand Bird Songs (1929); Episcopal Jubilee of Archbishop Redwood (1934); Poems (1937); New Zealand Poems (1940); More Poems (1951); and Centenary, Sisters of Mercy, Wellington 1861–1961 (1961).