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Born in Ireland on March 15, 1921, Maureen Daly’s family soon moved to Wisconsin because it reminded her father of the Emerald Isle. She married William P. McGivern, a mystery writer, in 1946, and the two of them traveled the world until he died of cancer in 1982. They had two children.
Ms. Daly is the author of Seventeenth Summer, a book about teenage love which has stayed in print since 1942 and won the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award in 1946. This is the book which is often said to have started young adult literature as we know it. The book was submitted to Dodd, Mead for its first intercollegiate literary fellowship—it won first prize.
She is quoted as saying that while many girls remember their first kiss, she remembers her first librarian.
Reading and writing were essential parts of Ms. Daly’s life. Her most recent young adult novel, Acts of Love, was published in 1986.
A long-time resident of Palm Desert, California, Ms. Daly died September 25, 2006.