Olive Tilford Dargan
Asheville, Buncombe County, North Carolina
Marker Inscription
Olive Tilford Dargan 1869 1968. Writer of fiction and poetry. "Fielding Burke," her pen name. Author of Call Home the Heart and Highland Annals. Home, 1925-68, was 1/4 mile N.
Erected by North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources
The Story
Olive Tilford Dargan was a poet and novelist who made her home near Asheville from 1925 until her death in 1968. Writing fiction under the pen name "Fielding Burke," she produced Call Home the Heart, a novel drawn from the Gastonia textile-mill strikes, as well as her Appalachian sketches in Highland Annals. Her work gave literary voice to the mountain people and mill workers of the modern South.
Why it matters
Dargan brought the struggles of Southern women, mill workers, and mountain communities into American literature, at a time when such voices were rarely heard.
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Related people
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