The novelist and playwright Jennifer Johnston has donated a substantial collection of her personal and literary papers to the library of Trinity College Dublin.
The library's keeper of manuscripts, Dr Bernard Meehan, said the archive consists of some 20 boxes of material and includes the manuscript of Johnston's most recent novel, The Gingerbread Woman, published in September.
The college last received such a major collection of literary papers a decade ago when the family of James Stephens donated his archive to the library.
Dr Meehan said "realistically it will take a couple of years" before the Johnston material has been catalogued.
The majority of items received relate to the writer's literary career, including drafts of several novels, plays, screenplays and other works. There are also some family papers relating to her father, the playwright, director, barrister and war correspondent Denis Johnston, whose own archives were given to Trinity in 1985 after his death.
Some of the most charming material is found in a notebook containing two plays Johnston wrote as a child and sold to her father for five shillings, and reports received on her work in class at Park House School in Donnybrook. At seven years and 10 months, for example, both her reading and spelling were described as "very good" while almost two years later her parents were informed that the young Jennifer's writing "has improved, but is often careless".
"That still continues now," Johnston observed yesterday.
Asked why she had decided to give her papers to Trinity, the author explained that she had been a student at the university for three years before her first marriage and that since her father's archive was already in the library, "this seemed a sensible option". Had she not considered selling her manuscripts? "Oh, for God's sake, no; that seems utterly daft to me."