Collection Guide

---

Administrative Information

Access and Restrictions: This collection is open for research.

Digital Surrogates: Except where indicated, this document describes but does not reproduce the actual text, images and objects which make up this collection. Materials are available only in the Special Collections Department.

Copyright:  Please read The University of Iowa Libraries' statement on "Property Rights, Copyright Law, and Permissions to Use Unpublished Materials"

Use of Collections:  The University of Iowa Libraries supports access to the materials, published and unpublished, in its collections. Nonetheless, access to some items may be restricted by their fragile condition or by contractual agreement with donors, and it may not be possible at all times to provide appropriate machinery for reading, viewing or accessing non-paper-based materials. Please read our Use of Manuscripts Statement.

---

Biographical Note

Mary Calhoun was born in Keokuk, Iowa, in 1926, where she grew up in a large red brick house on a bluff above the Mississippi. Her Welsh mother told her stories of fairies, witches, and magical doings. She decided at the age of seven that she wanted to be a writer, and she wrote poetry and fantasies and became a storyteller. As a teenager, she worked in the local public library conducting their story hour. In 1948 she earned a B.A. degree in Journalism at the University of Iowa. She worked for the Omaha World-Herald in 1948 and for the Gresham Outlook in Gresham, Oregon, as a society editor in 1948 -- 1949.

Calhoun wrote more than forty children's books, as well as stories for children's magazines. An avid student of folklore, she wrote many stories based on folklore. A cat-lover as well, many of her books feature cats.

C. Pummer and J. Roethler, August 2004

---

Scope and Contents

Four progressive and dated manuscript drafts of Magic in the Alley, published in 1970.

---

Related Materials

Many of Calhoun's manuscripts are in the Kerlan Collection at the University of Minnesota.

http://special.lib.umn.edu/clrc/kerlan/index.php

---

Acquisition and Processing Information

These papers were given to the University of Iowa Libraries by Mary Calhoun in 1972.

Guide posted to Internet: August 2004

---

Box Contents List

Clippings

Manuscripts

Magic In the Alley

First draft of manuscript [1964?]

Typescript -- with revisions

Carbon typescript -- with revisions

Typescript -- with revisions

Carbon typescript -- with revisions [1968?]

The University of Iowa Libraries
© 2003. The University of Iowa. All rights reserved