Donated by Elizabeth Allen on August 4, 1967.
Non-circulating; available for research.
This collection is protected by the Copyright Law of the United States (Title 17, U. S. Code). Reproductions can be made only if they are to be used for "private study, scholarship, or research." It is the user's responsibility to verify copyright ownership and to obtain all necessary permissions prior to the reproduction, publication, or other use of any portion of these materials, other than that noted above.
Born during 1914 in Syracuse, New York, Elizabeth Allen Thompson (who writes under the name Elizabeth Allen) acquired an A. B. in 1936 and an M. A. in 1938 from the University of Michigan. While she planned a career in teaching English, she developed her skills in creative writing, twice winning the University of Michigan's Avery and Jule Hopwood Award (in 1932 and again in 1936) for her short fiction. In college, Allen focused on short stories and poems -- an interest that prevailed years afterwards -- but in the 1960's she began writing novels for young adults. Married with children, Allen wrote out of her kid's experiences, publishing The In-Between in 1959, The Loser in 1965, then The Forest-House, Margie and Younger's Race in the following years and also a book of short stories. The Loser received praise from the Christian Science Monitor's reviewer of children's books for an open-endedness that forced young readers to think about the ending. Allen skills as a writer spilled into areas outside children's literature as well. She contributed essays, fiction and poetry to such publications as the feminist monthly Sister Advocate and other magazines including Redbook, Seventeen, and Woman's World.
Sources:
This collection holds original typescripts as well as page proofs and galleys for Elizabeth Allen's second novel for young adults. In a letter to the deGrummond curator in 1967, Allen lamented that she did not compose on the typewriter and so had not kept the preliminary manuscripts for The Loser. However, the collection does hold one page of handwritten manuscript for chapter one, page one; sadly, this is the only surviving fragment of manuscript for this title. Despite the loss of the other preliminary manuscripts, Allen donated the edited typescripts and galleys to the deGrummond Archive, and these detail the long process of composition and revision that each author endures when readying a manuscript for publication.
In folder one, there is one photostat copy of page one of The Loser as it appeared in Seventeen magazine in 1963 as part of a two-story series and a photostat copy of some of Seventeen's "Letters to the Editor" regarding The Loser. Another item in folder one will be of interest -- ten pages of typescript of an early version of The Loser, then entitled "The Winner."
The researcher will note that Allen marked the upper right (sometimes left) hand of six pages in green marker pencil; she wished to indicate the order of these items' creation.
A. Book (1965)
Box Inventory
Box/Folder
A. Book
THE LOSER by Elizabeth Allen (New York: E.P. Dutton and Company, 1965).
1/1 Handwritten manuscript page of chapter 1, page 1 of The Loser;
typescript of pp. 1-10 of Chapter one entitled "The Winner";
photostat copy of page one of The Loser as it appeared in Seventeen magazine in 1963;
photostat copy of "Letters to the Editor" in Seventeen regarding The Loser;
1/2-1/4 Typescript, chapters 1-15
1/2 chapters 1-6, pp. 1-53,
1/3 chapters 7-11, pp. 54-94,
1/4 chapters 12-15, pp. 95-118 plus backmatter (p.129);
1/5 Page proofs (17 items);
1/6-1/7 Galleys
1/6 pp. 1-39, edited 12/23/63,
1/7 pp. 1-128, final edited copy.
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