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Lois Dwight Cole

American editor and children's author

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMay 24, 2024
Entity authorityQ16146430
Source-derived summary

Lois Dwight Cole Taylor (1903 – 20 July 1979) was an American editor and writer of children's literature. She wrote with her husband Allan Taylor as Allan Dwight. Their most successful novel was Drums in the Forest, first printed in 1936 and up to a 22nd printing in 1970. Most of her own novels were written as Anne Elliot. She also wrote as Anne Lattin, Nancy Dudley, Lynn Avery and Caroline Arnett.

When working at Macmillan Publishers, she met Margaret Mitchell. Lois Cole was the first person outside the Mitchell family to read Gone with the Wind.

Biography

Lois Dwight Cole was born in 1903 in New York City. She received her BA at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts in 1924. She worked at Macmillan Publishers, who sent her from New York to Atlanta in 1927.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Lois Dwight Cole” is american editor and children's author. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Lois, Dwight and Cole, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewStrongest as a route into the people, institutions and dated events that shaped the subject’s public record. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1903, 1979, 1936, 1970—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1903-01-01. For this dossier, Lois, Dwight and Cole is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “american editor and children's author” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 24, 2024. The linked authority identifier is Q16146430. VIAF identifies the subject as 315534387. The Library of Congress control number is no95002743. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1903, 1979, 1936 and 1970.

Critical limits

Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Lois Dwight Cole”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Lois Dwight Cole primary sources, Lois Dwight Cole archive and Lois research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Lois Dwight Cole”?
  2. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
  3. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Lois Dwight Cole” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.