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collection is comprised of 229 banker boxes of material which include drafts of Kennelly’s published works; drafts of unpublished works; plays; novels; drafts of reviews, articles, speeches, essays, appreciations and tributes for colleagues and other Irish literary and cultural figures as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 The first series contains his published poetry collections organised in publication order, and his unpublished poetry collections such as ‘A Girl’ and ‘Virginity’. The unpublished poetry is organised to ensure usability of the material and the first line is used where no title is present.
The second series is comprised of Kennelly’s published plays and some unpublished dramatic adaptions, while the third series contains drafts of his novels and short stories.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.
The Papers of Michael Davitt, MS 9320-9681.
A project to catalogue, conserve and digitise the papers of Irish nationalist, social reformer, and champion of the Irish diaspora Michael Davitt (1846-1906) is currently underway as part of Virtual Trinity Library. Davitt was a convicted Fenian, Irish nationalist, Irish Parliamentary Party MP, investigative journalist, and agrarian campaigner, who is well known for being one of the founders of the Irish National Land League. This extensive collection was presented to the Library from 1978 to 1980 by Davitt’s son, Cahir Davitt, and includes over 6000 letters, 550 photographs, 60 diaries as well as newspaper cuttings, published pamphlets, and articles. This material details an important period in Irish history when the focus of Irish nationalism shifted from the revolutionary politics of the Fenian Brotherhood to the constitutional politics of the Irish Parliamentary Party in Westminster and the mass-agrarian movement of the Irish National Land League. Within the collection are diaries and notebooks with research for his books on prison life, his time in the USA, Australia and New Zealand and Russia.
The Davitt papers are one of the most heavily used historic collections in the Library of Trinity College Dublin. The Michael Davitt Papers Project aims to update the existing catalogue, to digitise and to publish the images online on Digital Collections, to increase the visibility and accessibility of this significant collection. An archivist, a conservator, and a digital photographer were appointed to the project between August and November 2024 and work has begun to make this collection of national importance more widely available. Keep an eye out for updates from this fascinating project!
Ciara Daly