News & Events

The “Beckett Beyond” exhibition of student zines, was launched this week in the Orientation Space of the Eavan Boland Library. Library visitors are invited to engage with the content of the zines: leaf through the pages, participate in experiments, and contact the zinesters to continue discussion.

The research zines have been produced by Junior Sophisters studying “Beckett Beyond”, a module offered by the Department of Drama (School of Creative Arts). The zines are outputs from a short research cycle on the life and dramatic work of Samuel Beckett, led by undergraduate learners, during which the students designed a project based on their personal and academic interests. Read more from some of the zinesters on our “Beckett Beyond 2025”  webpage. 

The students were invited to:

-              identify an area of investigation that would make a significant contribution to Beckett studies and potentially to another discipline, 

-              assemble a relevant corpus and other necessary research materials, 

-              identify the adequate methodologies, 

-              plan the research timeline, 

-              access research materials and conduct research independently, 

-              design a zine to disseminate their research creatively, for expert and non-expert readers alike, 

-              review and support their peers’ work in progress, 

-              present the research process and outcomes to the local Beckett research community.

The exhibition highlights this body of work, which is catalogued and preserved as part of the Library’s permanent collection, thus demonstrating the importance and strength of undergraduate research. It is our hope that the project will serve to stimulate positive interactions between the community and to develop emerging and long-standing interdisciplinary dynamics.

The eleven zines created in Michaelmas 2024 extend the “Beckett Beyond” collection – now counting thirty zines – with publications on Beckett’s collaborative methods, companionship and loneliness, the Irish language, Irish English and Irishness, imagination, not knowing and unknowing, fashion, politics, animality, posthumanism, as well as breath in connection to vaping. This cohort from Drama and Theatre Studies, as well as English Studies, thus investigated a broad range of topics that are central to Beckett’s oeuvre and Beckett studies, but they also explored how the artist’s creative work and methods can themselves operate as a lens to investigate complex issues tackled by the humanities. Each zine, in its own way, demonstrates the relevance of Beckett’s drama in contemporary contexts that Beckett himself could not have anticipated.

The exhibition will close at the end of term, but the zines will remain available for consultation upon request. We look forward to welcoming visitors, and we would deeply appreciate hearing from you via the survey accessible with the QR code located on the exhibition posters in the Library.   

The Library, the Department of Drama and the Trinity Centre for Beckett Studies offer their congratulations to the zinesters, and they extend their gratitude to all the visitors who will interact with the exhibition.

Photos from the launch can be viewed on the Library Instagram page - @tcdlibrary.

The Library of Trinity College Dublin is renowned for its medieval collections, but a new exhibition opened this week showcasing new treasures acquired by the Library celebrating and reflecting on Ireland’s literary greats, past and present, as well as historical documents and contemporary works of art. 

On display is material from the Christy Nolan Archive alongside items related to acclaimed writers such as John Banville, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Samuel Beckett, Jonathan Swift, and Bram Stoker.

Also included in the exhibition are modern works of art works inspired by Irish writers of the past reflecting on themes including homelessness, racism, disability, and direct provision. 

The exhibition highlights the important work cultural institutions such as the Library of Trinity College Dublin undertake “collecting the now” — acquiring and safeguarding contemporary cultural artifacts for future generations, explains Laura Shanahan, curator of the exhibition and Head of Research Collections, at Trinity Library.

Highlights include: 

• Literary drafts, photographs and some personal effects of Christy Nolan including his pointer known as a ‘unicorn stick’.
• Manuscript drafts of John Banville’s publication The Singularities.
• A notecard written by Samuel Beckett while in hiding in Tunisia following the announcement of his being awarded Nobel Prize for literature.
• Literary drafts for Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin’s poetry collection The Sun-fish.
• Original artwork for Annie West’s book Yeats in Love.
• A Modest Proposal by The Salvage Press – limited edition fine art book containing new interpretations of Jonathan Swift’s satirical essay with poems by Jessica Traynor and lithographs by David O'Kane.
• Artist Elide Piras’s When You Are Old woodcut inspired by Yeat’s famous poem.

Laura Shanahan, curator of the exhibition and Head of Research Collections, commented: 

“It is so important to us, in the Library, to be able to share the collections in our care with the wider public, and to demonstrate our commitment to collecting printed works, art and archives that document the lived experiences of people today, in our society. It is also important to build upon the records of the past, and for us to integrate voices and experiences that may be historically underrepresented. This exhibition showcases that work and the community of artists, writers, academics, librarians and archivists who share the same mission.”

Entitled ‘Zealous mercurial dreams were about to be realised’, the exhibition draws inspiration from Christy Nolan’s autobiography Under the Eye of the Clock. His archive was donated to Trinity by his family. 

Christy Nolan’s sister Yvonne Nolan explained:

“I know that Trinity would have been the place that both Christy and my mother and father would most want the Archive to go to. The most important thing that any of us had contact with in our lives was that Christy was a daylight genius. And now it was my turn to mind the lamp and pass it on.

“When Trinity accepted the Archive, I was so, so delighted. I heaved a sigh of relief, knowing that – again – “if you can see it, you can be it” for other Irish or international people who are dealing with issues of disability; that his Archive would be here to be researched, that – long after publishers had stopped publishing Christy’s work – it would still be here and alive and living in a new place.”

The physical exhibition in the Long Room of the Old Library and forms part of the Book of Kells Experience. See here to book tickets for both exhibitions. The exhibition runs until May 20th, 2025.

Four online exhibitions will be published to complement the physical exhibition. The first,  focusing on the John Banville archive, goes live today on the Library’s online exhibition website. [https://www.tcd.ie/library/exhibitions/]. Further online exhibitions will focus on the Christy Nolan archive, the Samuel Beckett correspondence and The Salvage Press’s A Modest Proposal book. 

Speaking about his own Archive being housed in Trinity, John Banville has said: 

“It was Patricia Quinn who said to me, years ago, “You should keep your papers, and you should keep them in Trinity.”  A wonderful notion, by the way - 'my papers'! But Patricia was right, and I am thrilled and fiercely proud to know that they are here, in Dublin, and in Trinity College. I delight in the fact.”

A series of linked public events will be hosted by the Library in the coming months drawing on the archives featured in the exhibition, including a panel and competition on ‘Disability and Creativity’; a feature on ‘Prize winning writing – rejection and triumph’ in collaboration with the Dublin Literary Award, ‘Art and activism’ and ‘Collecting the now: John Banville’s archive’. The events schedule will be published on the Library website.

Laura Shanahan added: 

“This exhibition aims to start new conversations about collecting, about supporting that collecting practice, and enabling the cataloguing and digitisation activities necessary to make these records accessible to as many people as possible. Looking ahead, we will be seeking support for this work on the Christy Nolan archive and the growth of other literary archival collections. And looking back, we are recognising the foresight our various benefactors through the centuries had in building this great library.”

‘Zealous mercurial dreams were about to be realised’ was launched by author and columnist Fintan O’Toole in the Long Room, Old Library, Trinity College Dublin on Thursday, 30th of January, 2025 at 6pm. 

Collections featured in this exhibition form part of the Virtual Trinity Library programme, a digitisation initiative of the Library of Trinity College Dublin’s most valued collections.  See the Virtual Trinity Library website for more.

Photo Caption:

Head of Research Collections pictured holding “A Modest Proposal” by The Salvage Press. A 21^st century response to Jonathan Swift’s original text.