Eileen Duggan

Eileen May Duggan OBE (21 May 1894 – 10 December 1972) was a New Zealand poet and journalist, from an Irish Roman Catholic family.

She was born in Tuamarina near Blenheim in Marlborough, the youngest of four daughters of John and Julia Duggan.

She studied at Victoria University College, Wellington from 1916, receiving a BA in 1916, and a MA with first class honours in history in 1918, and was awarded the Jacob Joseph Scholarship.

She supported herself by journalism, with a weekly article in The New Zealand Tablet, writing the women’s page under the pen name of Pippa.

"[5] She stopped writing poems (to "have done with words") about 1951 but continued to earn income from her prose for another twenty years.

Her reputation declined after her death, from her association with the English Georgian poets and with the inclusion of some of her poems in the 1930 anthology Kowhai Gold which was rather self-consciously New Zealand.

Duggan in 1955