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Olive Higgins Prouty (10 January 1882 – 24 March 1974) was an American novelist and poet, best known for her pioneering consideration of psychotherapy in Now, Voyager (1941) (made into a movie Now, Voyager (1942) directed by Irving Rapper and starring Bette Davis and a radio drama starring Ida Lupino produced by Cecil B. de Mille on the Lux Radio Theater,) and her feminist novel (1922) Stella Dallas adapted into a stage play in 1924 and movies in 1925, 1937. The novel was used as the basis for the successful film - the 1937 version of Stella Dallas that was a melodrama that starred Barbara Stanwyck, and was nominated for two Academy Awards - and a radio serial which was broadcast daily for 18 years, despite Prouty's legal efforts (since she had not authorized the sale of the broadcast rights, and was displeased with her characters' portrayals). Olive Higgins, who was born and raised in Worcester, MA was a 1904 graduate of Smith College and after she married Louis Prouty in 1907, they moved to Brookline, MA in 1908.

In 1894 Prouty was reported to have suffered from a nervous breakdown that lasted nearly two years according to the Clark University Archives and Special Collections.

After the death of her daughter Olivia in 1923 Prouty suffered from another nervous breakdown in 1925. Her poetry collection was published posthumously by Friends of the Goddard Library, Clark University, Worcester, MA (1997) as Between the Barnacles and Bayberries: and Other Poems after it was released for publication in 1997 by her children Richard and Jane.

Prouty is also known for her philanthropic works, and for her resulting association with Sylvia Plath, whom she encountered as a result of endowing a Smith College scholarship for "promising young writers". She supported Plath financially in the wake of Plath's unsuccessful 1953 suicide attempt; subsequently, Plath used Prouty as the basis of the character of "Philomena Guinea" in her 1963 novel, The Bell Jar.

In 1961, Prouty wrote her memoirs but, as her public profile had diminished, could not find a publisher; she had them printed at her own expense.

There are references to an Olive Higgins Prouty Foundation, Inc.

This author page uses material from the Wikipedia article "Olive Higgins Prouty", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0