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The collection fills an archive box and in brief comprises: 3 pieces of rough original artwork from the early 1940s; 19 typescripts (5 novels & 14 short stories), plus 1 manuscript short story, these totalling roughly 285,000 words; 37 letters, 2 contracts and 9 invoices from McLoughlin's association with T. V. Boardman, 1949-1966. 12 letters from authors McLoughlin worked with or provided artwork for. 120 photographs (approximately) used by McLoughlin in the composition of jacket & cover artwork. 465 (approximately) dust jacket & paperback covers, all trimmed and often annotated & laminated by McLoughlin. Roughly 20 letters from fans & correspondence with U.S. institutions, plus other sundry items & ephemera. From McLoughlin's estate via a family member, this collection is presumed to represent all that remains extant, or at least existing and together, of material from his professional creative life. It demonstrates the scope and volume of his artistic endeavours, the esteem in which he was held by both colleagues and fans during his life, and provides evidence of his working methods and collaborative approach. It is also an important record of the considerably less well documented and not insignificant extent of McLoughlin's thwarted ambitions as a writer of pulp fiction (including 3 excellent James Bond satires), ambitions which it is clear began in his early 20s, ran parallel to his paid work as an artist, and had not been abandoned at the end of his life. More details below. Artwork: Three rough original designs on stiff board for murals painted by McLoughlin during WW2 at the Woolwich Royal Arsenal Depot. One in pastels, signed & annotated in ink: "MURAL ROUGH DESIGN R.A. CANTEEN", which is approximately 27cm x 21cm, giving the scale relative to the finished mural of one & a half inches to one foot. It depicts soldiers relaxing, arguing & flirting with two young women. The second, of similar dimensions, shows a young couple in uniform holding hands under a lamp, signed, and noting the scale of one to six inches, with a laminated photo of McLoughlin at work on the mural. Lastly, a slightly larger unsigned painting of a line of women dancing the can-can on-stage with an orchestra playing uproariously below, this cut down, without annotations and only one side of the scale remaining, though with rough pencil calculations to the reverse. All three are divided by grids to aid their translation to the finished murals. McLoughlin worked on roughly 50 morale-boosting murals at the R.A. depot, some of vast scale. In 'The Hardboiled Art of D. Mcloughlin' he writes: "The first three murals were of sufficient interest to be featured in the magazine 'Illustrated' of November 27, 1943. […] I still have the original roughs for these murals" (McLoughlin & David Ashford, 1994, page 10). The murals were destroyed by the V1 rocket attacks before the end of the war. Fiction. A 1992 article in the Bolton Evening News states that McLoughlin wrote 4 novels, which suggests that the present material represents all that he wrote, at least in novelistic terms. None appear to have been published. These longer works, roughly chronologically, are as follows: The earliest is untitled and dates from August 1942. It comprises: two detached pages, a: "Psychiatrist's Report on a soldier.", of authentic appearance and signed in blue ink, diagnosing the patient, an artist, with: "chronic nervous hysteria following nervous collapse", and suggesting that he displays: "a noticeable trend of self-pity and a marked antipathy toward his fellows". There follows a note of Apology, stating that this is fictional and "calculated to convey to the reader the workings and repercussions of a highly-strung and tortuous mind.", adding: "May we say that by virtue of its theme, lofty ideals have been somewhat spurned and the sordid very much accentuated.". Page 1 of Chapter 1 has been lost but the remaining pages are present and still bound by a corner butterfly clip, they.
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