Mona Douglas MBE RBV (18 September 1898 – 8 October 1987) was a Manx cultural activist, folklorist, poet, novelist and journalist.

She was involved in a great number of initiatives to revive interest and activity in Manx culture, including societies, classes, publications and youth groups.

[3] Her parents had left the Isle of Man to find work in England, eventually setting up a bakery and confectioners in Birkenhead.

[4] Because of ill health, Douglas was sent to live with her maternal grandparents, Ellen "Nell" Quayle and Patrick "Pat" Holmes (listed as Thomas in the 1901 Census) when only a matter of months old.

[8] On Sunday evenings, from when Douglas was six years old, a number of other cultured people from the community would gather at their house "for poetry readings, discussion and music".

[8] Through this she gained a knowledge of "the great English and American poets" and the music of Handel, Bach, Beethoven, Schubert, Liszt, Chopin, Puccini and Verdi.

When it won first prize, she came to the attention of Sophia Morrison, W. Walter Gill and William Cubbon, whom she later described as "the strongest influences in determining the trend of my subsequent literary work.

[5] In recognition of Douglas' poetry up to this point she was invested as a Bard of the Third Degree in the Order of Gorsedds at the Royal Eisteddfod of Wales, and given the bardic name of 'Mona Manaw' ("Mona of Man").

The poem placed first in that collection showed clearly Douglas' "open sympathy" for the Irish Easter Rising of 1916:[17] Douglas' avid interest in the Celtic Movement in Ireland was deepened when she visited Dublin in 1921 at the invitation of Professor Agnes O'Farrelly of University College Dublin, who she had probably met at the Celtic Congress four years earlier.

Whilst staying with O'Farrelly in Rathgar, Douglas took a short course in Irish Literature; she also studied a course in librarianism, with the intention of getting a job at the Library of the Manx Museum, which was to open in 1922.

[20] Douglas collaborated with Arnold Foster, a pupil of Vaughan Williams, on a set of arrangements of twelve Manx songs, published by Stainer & Bell in 1928.

[21] In 1929 Douglas contributed folklore connected to wells in Lonan to W. Walter Gill's seminal work, A Manx Scrapbook.

Douglas reported that, "The Ramsey schoolboy and his wonderful dance were the sensation of the Festival, and received special notices in all the big London papers.

[29] Douglas' fabrication of much material is partly explained by her ultimate aim being to repopularise Manx culture rather than its mere preservation.

At present things look rather black for both of these; but personally I believe in them both: I believe that the Manx people will yet work out their economic solution, & that sometime sooner or later, they will awake to the beauty of their neglected language, & turn to it again with a rush of appreciation & true national feeling.

With the start of World War II, the Isle of Man was chosen as a base for internment camps for enemy aliens.

After a short time the rules of detention were relaxed for those internees who posed no threat to the Allies, enabling them to be utilised for work in local Manx farms.

[38] By this time Douglas' father had died and when her mother also passed on, in 1953, she inherited 'Thie ny Garee', and she would later expand this to also run the Clarum.

[5] The heavy influence of Celtic Mysticism on some of these stories can be seen in 'A Son Comes Home', later to be reproduced in Manninagh:[40] "He realised that the secret magic of heredity had stirred within him [...] evoking a fragment of that racial past of which our transitory lives are built, which dwells ever invisibly within us, hidden in the intertices of time and space save when some rare combination of mood and circumstance restores it to a fleeting renewal of consciousness in living experience."

[41] After retiring from her job as rural librarian at the age of 65, Douglas joined the staff of the Isle of Man Times as a reporter and feature-writer in 1963.

The first edition was published in May 1972 and ranged over a wide field of cultural interests, including Manx theatre, art, crafts, literature, poetry (in English & Gaelic), folklore, banking, farming, fishing, genealogy and conservation.

The novel was set in the 1790s and formed a fictional background to the well-known Manx song, Ny Kirree fo Niaghtey ("The Sheep Under the Snow").

The following year it expanded into a five-day inter-Celtic festival, giving an opportunity for the six Celtic nations of the Isle of Man, Brittany, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and Cornwall to participate.

[4] Just before Christmas 1986 Douglas fell and broke her leg but, in spite of her friends' urgings, she refused to move from her remote cottage.

[20] The estimation of Douglas at the end of her life was immediately shown through a series of memorial services and concerts that followed in the months after her death.

These were an unsorted and uncatalogued collection of "everything from bank statements and bills to original manuscripts and unpublished works,"[46] until Autumn 2003 when a Culture Vannin grant enabled Dr Breesha Maddrell "to sift through them, collate them and then make a detailed assessment of their value and content.

[47] In 2012, the 25th anniversary of Douglas' death was marked with a series of events on the Isle of Man, including a special concert of songs and dances held in Peel and recorded for subsequent release on DVD and CD,[48] and a talk on her life and work in Ramsey.

Mona's Isle: The Legacy of Mona Douglas featured many leading contemporary Manx musicians, including Aalin Clague, Annie Kissack, Bob Carswell, Breesha Maddrell, Clare Kilgallon, Dave Kilgallon, Dave Mclean, Greg Joughin and Mandy Griffin.

"[52] Douglas' resilience can perhaps be attributed to her basic love of the Isle of Man, as she expressed in many ways during her life:[8] "But behind all the rest, for me, is always the beauty and mystery and glory of our own Sacred Island, Ellan Vannin in the heart which is for ever our Mother and Queen to be adored and served, the ideal to be kept inviolate for those who shall follow us, and so handed on: our inspiration, and our ultimate rest – Ellan Vannin dy bragh!"