Olive Tilford Dargan (January 11, 1869 – January 22, 1968) was a writer and a poet. Her early works revolved around mountain poetry. Her works like:The Cycle's Rim, Lute and Furrow, Highland Annalswere inspired from her love of mountains and nature. Later in her career, she published novels that focuses on racism, sexism, andfascism through her feminist visions of political activism andromanticism. Her most notable works wereCall Home the HeartandA Stone Came Rollingwhich were written as part of herGastonia novels.
Olive Tilford Dargan was born on January 11, 1869, on a farm in Grayson County,Kentucky. She moved to the southern Ozarks with her parents Elisha Frances Tilford & Rebecca (Day) Tilford, around age eleven and started her work in elementary education. She became a teaching assistant at her Parents school until the time that she graduated. Dargan attended Peabody Teacher's College and laterRadcliffe College where she met her husband Pegram Dargan, who was a senior at Harvard and a poet. She taught inArkansas,Missouri,Texas andCanada. In 1898 she married Pegram Dargan. During her time as a writer, Tilford published a number of novels, dramas, and poetry.[1]
Her husband drowned near the coast of Cuba in 1915 and she returned to North Carolina. During that time she publishedThe Cycle's Rimwhich were poems dedicated to her husband. She won the Southern Society of New York Prize for her workThe Cycle's Rimin 1916. She was also awarded the Belmont-Ward Fugitive Prize in 1925. Dargan received an honorary degree in Literature from theUniversity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1925.[2]
Olive Tilford Dargan started her writing career in 1904 when she published poetic dramas andlyric poetry. Her themes heavily revolved around mountains and nature. She traveled extensively and publishedThe Welsh Pony and her first mountain poetryPath Flower and Other Verses in 1906. Her poemLute and Furrow andThe Spotted Hawk both contained her theme on mountains and the beauty of its nature.[2]
After a fire at her Round Top home, Dargan moved toAsheville, where she lived in Bluebonnet Lodge, once owned byRutherford Platt Hayes.[3] Dargan took a pen name and wrote under the nameFielding Burke. She began writing short stories and three other novels as well. Her most notable works wereHighland Annals and theGastonia novels:Call Home The Heart andA Stone Came Rolling.Call Home the Heart andA Stone Came Rolling were influenced by the mountain migrant workers during the 1929Loray Mill strike inGastonia, North Carolina.[4]
Highland Annals, based on people Dargan knew when she was a widowed farmer inSwain County, North Carolina, was retitledFrom My Highest Hill in 1941, and this version included photos byBayard Wooten.[3]
A North Carolina historical marker went up at the West Asheville library in 2000. Bluebonnet Lodge was torn down for office development after Dargan's death in 1968.[3]
1.Finding Aid for the Olive Tilford Dargan Manuscript, 1958 The University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
2. Booker, Keith M. 2005Encyclopedia of Literature and Politics: Censorship, Revolution, and Writing, Volume I: A-G”Greenwood Publishing Group, March 1, 2015, Print.
3. Cella, Laurie J.C. "Radical Romance in the Piedmont: Olive Tilford Dargan's Gastonia Novels, The Johns Hopkins University Press, n.d. Web. 03 Mar. 2015.
4. Burke, Fielding.Call Home the Heart: A Novel of the Thirties. Old Westbury, NY: Feminist, 1983. Print.
5. Ackerman, Kathy C."A Heart of Revolution: The Radical Life and Novels of Olive Dargan," First ed. Knoxville: U of Tennessee, 2004.Google Books. University of Tennessee Press. Web. 03 Mar. 2015
6. Elfenbein, Anna Shannon."A forgottenRevolutionary Voice: 'Woman's Place' and Race in Olive Dargan's Call Home the Heart." Manning, Carol S. "Female Tradition in Southern Literature." University of Illinois Press, 1993. March 2015.
7. "Olive Tilford Dargan."North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 Apr. 2015.
