Loose Leaves/Sadbh: University College Dublin got a major boost to its literary archive this week when the library of poet Austin Clarke (below) was presented to the college on long-term loan.
Comprising more than 6,000 volumes, it was initially purchased many years ago by the founder of Poetry Ireland, John F Deane. It was handed over on Wednesday by Poetry Ireland at a ceremony in UCD's archives department, where it will become part of the college's special collections. It could hardly be more appropriate that the books are now in UCD where, as a young man, Clarke succeeded his teacher, Thomas MacDonagh, after his execution in 1916.
Also deposited at the archives were the papers of Poetry Ireland. Although Poetry Ireland, now located in the Royal College of Surgeons, will continue to house a working library, the emphasis will be on contemporary poetry books and journals. Among the items now with UCD are books dating back to the 1920s and first editions of most of the Liam Miller Dolmen publications. Also in the deposit are smaller collections and donations from writers including John Jordan and Eilís Dillon. When the books in the bequest are catalogued, an inventory will be made available on the web.
Taking liberties
When you produce a dictionary containing 62 million words, running to 60 volumes and 50,000 articles, it is sadly inevitable that there will be mistakes, even if £22 million (€34 million) is spent producing it and even if its costs £7,500 (€10,900) to buy. Certainly, since the publication of the mammoth Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB) an enormous amount of correspondence has been running across the water about various discrepancies and inaccuracies in some entries.
Some of the Irish entries were not immune. Many of these are documented by Kevin Whelan, director of the Keough Notre Dame Centre in Dublin, in the current issue of History Ireland, which is now published six times a year. Although he welcomes it as a superb production, he lists among its errors the hardy perennials of misspelling which crop up; Fr Mathew (in the entry on Patrick Murphy); John Mitchell (in Froude); Wolf Tone (in Waddell Cunningham) and Thomas Packenham (in Fr John Murphy ).
Liberties, says Whelan, have been routinely taken with Irish geography; for instance, James Clarence Mangan died in the Meath hospital, Long Lane, not Long Street, while Russborough is placed in Co Wexford, instead of Wicklow, in the entry on Sir John Beit. Equally, the entry on John Redmond has him buried in a family vault in "Wexford city", causing Whelan to muse "while the issue of city status has occasionally perturbed the burghers of Kilkenny, Wexford people have placidly accepted their status as a town".
Whelan however is particularly impressed with the superb search facilities on the online edition of the ODNB. "This is simply the best website that I have ever consulted." He obviously had a great time searching for specific words and discovered that Fenian will throw up 150 entries and "bastard" 227. A particular delight is that the searches might throw up hitherto unsuspected connections, through education or residence, between people.
The "wealth at death" heading he also liked. It enabled him to discover that while Roger Casement left £135 and Seán Lemass £43,586, among those who died penniless were Anne Devlin and Pádraig Pearse.
This current edition of History Ireland also contains a lively correspondence on the letters pages about Tom Barry and an assessment of IRA leader Seán Russell following the decapitation of the statue of him in Dublin's Fairview Park.
Was Russell a Nazi collaborator or simply an exponent of the Fenian adage that "England's difficulty is Ireland's opportunity?" is the question which propels Brian Hanley into assessing the evidence.
In its editorial and a TV review of media coverage following the death of Pope John Paul II, the magazine also takes a look at what it calls the remarkable claims made about the late pope's influence on world history, "the most notable being that he was the main architect of the downfall of communism".
History Ireland, May/June, Vol 13. No 3. (€5.50) See also www.oxforddnb.com
Island hop
A travel writing trip to the Skelligs with Matt Bannerman is among the more unusual highlights of the West Cork Literary Festival, which starts on June 25th and runs until July 2nd.
Other writers taking part are Matthew Sweeney, Seamus Heaney, Suzanne Power and David Mitchell.
Details from 027 52788. See also www.fishpublishing.com