The Library is delighted to announce that the Brendan Kennelly Literary Archive is now available to researchers in the Research Collections Reading Room. The archive was catalogued as part of Virtual Trinity Library, the Library’s ambitious project that seeks to enable online access to many of our most prized research collections across nine representative categories. The Brendan Kennelly project represents the themes of Ireland's Literary Heritage: Literary Archives and Trinity's Scholarly Contribution to the World: Trinity Icons.
Brendan Kennelly was born in Ballylongford, County Kerry, on the 17th April 1936. He Professor of Modern Literature at Trinity and was elected Professor Emeritus after his retirement in 2005. His archival material arrived in the Library in several different tranches, from varied provenances including Brendan Kennelly’s rooms in the University, from his house in Ballylongford, and from the Kennelly family. It was accessioned over a decade; the first tranche came in around 2008-2009. A large tranche of material came in 2018 - 2022 from his family. Material was also accessioned from the English Department in 2021- 2023.
The collection is comprised of 229 banker boxes of material which include drafts of Kennelly’s published works; drafts of unpublished works; plays; novels; drafts of reviews, articles, speeches, essays, appreciations and tributes for colleagues and other Irish literary and cultural figures as well as material relating to his academic career and life as a public figure. It also includes lecture notes and materials relating to his time teaching in Trinity and elsewhere, correspondence with family, colleagues, and the general public, as well as with Irish writers, editors and publishers. Other material includes posters and programmes, photographs, and a small amount of audio material.
The part of the collection which is now catalogued and available for consultation is the literature section. This section comprises four series. The first series contains his published poetry collections organised in publication order, and his unpublished poetry collections such as ‘A Girl’ and ‘Virginity’. The unpublished poetry is organised to ensure usability of the material and the first line is used where no title is present.
The second series is comprised of Kennelly’s published plays and some unpublished dramatic adaptions, while the third series contains drafts of his novels and short stories. The fourth series contains drafts and copies of other work and material relating to his work editing and compiling anthologies.
The literature section amounts to fifty-eight banker boxes in total and has been prioritised for release based on several factors including size, interest for the researcher, recommendations from the English Department in Trinity College Dublin, ease of release and GDPR concerns (or lack thereof).
You can view the finding aid for the collection here.