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Cuala Press narrating conflict

Billy Shortall.

The Yeats sisters, Elizabeth, and Lily (Susan) depicted above on an advertisement postcard c. 1905 by their sister-in-law Mary Cottenham Yeats. The card shows Elizabeth carrying books and Lily Yeats holding an embroidered garment as they set out to build a female Arts and Crafts enterprise with Evelyn Gleeson  at the anticipated dawn of a new Independent Ireland.

Elizabeth ran the hand printing press. With her brother William as editor, the press produced important Irish revivalist literature. Additionally, Elizabeth worked with several Irish artists, key among them her brother Jack, to produce hand-coloured prints, cards, bookplates, and the illustrated series A Broadside. Lily managed the embroidery department. The Yeats sisters separated from Gleeson in 1908 and continued their areas of production nearby in their new venture Cuala Industries. Both were female enterprises and almost exclusively employed and trained young women as assistants in producing artefacts adhering to arts and crafts principles. Elizabeth was a woman of her time, a time of increasing female agency, politically, socially, and in the workplace.  A contested and complex history was lived through her Press.

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Transcontinental Threads

Adam MacKlin and Billy Shortall.

Lily (1866-1949) and Elizabeth Yeats (1868-1940), pictured above, originally moved to Dublin from London to join Evelyn Gleeson (1855-1944) in her newly established arts and crafts enterprise, Dun Emer Industries in 1902, where the printing of high-quality books and prints was overseen by Elizabeth and embroidery by Lily. The enterprise was named after the Irish mythological figure, Emer, who was renowned for her artistic and needlework skills, and Cúchulainn’s wife. However, after an acrimonious split with Gleeson, the sisters established Cuala Industries in 1908 taking their own areas of production with them. The ideology of both organisations was espoused in the original Dun Emer prospectus, which stated its desire to “make beautiful things” using honest and native materials in “the spirit and tradition of the country”. Both were female enterprises and almost exclusively employed and trained young women as assistants in arts and crafts

The Press, the dominant part of Cuala’s business, published handcrafted books by leading members of the Irish literary revival including Nobel prize-winning sibling William (1865- 1939), and prints designed by Irish artists, chief among them another sibling Jack Yeats (1871-1957). Lily’s embroidery department was also notable, but its output was smaller and its legacy harder to track as many of the domestic embroidered items, such as, clothing, tablecloths and bedspreads are no longer extant. Framed embroidered art works such as those in the National Gallery of Ireland and in private collections indicate the artistry and technical quality of the embroidered work of Lily and her assistants. Before moving to Dublin, Lily had established herself as a skilled artistic embroiderer working for six years in the late 1800s with May Morris, daughter of William Morris, in their world-renowned Arts and Crafts scheme.

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On the back of an envelope: new manuscript of Synge’s ‘Playboy’ found hiding in plain sight

The letter and envelope, TCD MS 4424-26.167, was originally sent to John Millington Synge from Henri Lebeau, a young French writer and great admirer of Synge, who visited the west of Ireland together with the Breton folklorist Anatole Le Braz in the spring of 1905.  The letter is postmarked 20 May 1905, so sent at the end of his trip. It is largely a personal letter with a request by Lebeau to Synge to remind him of an address and contact for lodgings while he is in London. Notably, he goes on to mention his memories of his visit to Ireland and offers his ‘impressions’ on ‘the rare qualities of heart of the Western peasants’. 

On the back of the envelope Synge has written notes on changes he intends to make to his drafts of The Playboy of the Western World.  These notes appear to be hastily written when compared to the handwriting of Synge’s personal notes elsewhere.  He uses shorthand and abbreviations such as ‘WQ + Ch’ indicating the characters Window Quinn and Christy.  Although scrappily written there is a sense of order in that he writes notes for Act 1 at the top of the envelope and works anticlockwise progressing through the play up to notes on Act 3 scene II, with lines drawn to separate notes for the differing acts and scenes from each other.  It is well documented in the TCD manuscripts website that Synge drafted many possible variations and endings for Playboy, and this document stands to how immediate some of these inspirations were captured by him.  There is a doodle in the left corner which merges into the first word of the note beginning ‘If necessary’, indicating that Synge was doodling with his pen as he developed these thoughts.  Of course, it cannot be said that Synge wrote these amendments as a direct response to Lebeau’s comments.  In my consultations with Professor Nicholas Grene at Trinity, it is estimated that Synge’s notes on the envelope are from late 1906, when Synge was well advanced on the composition of the play and used this envelope to make a quick note to point up motifs in individual scenes.

Nevertheless, the content of the letter still stands as an example of the type of representations of the Western peasant Synge was in conversation with as he was writing the play which would go on to spark riots partly due to its iconoclasm of the Western Irish peasant.

Again with help from Professor Nicholas Grene, the following is an attempt at deciphering Synge’s notes:

Top centre: ‘Work WQ’s [Widow Quin] pity into last scene of I [insertion] and keep [insertion] his deed through it to the fore’

Left below: ‘If necessary use motif of the trick she WQ. [insertion with caret mark] is playing on Pegeen keeping his [word illegible] II’

Right below: ‘If possible preserve Pegeen’s charm in end of 3.II when she pets him’.

Bottom left: ‘Work her pity very fully in same scene II but make it [illegible word underlined] the pity of reality’.

Bottom centre: ‘You have WQ. and Ch [Christy] face to face through scene with old man and they are face to face again’

A point worth noting is the address on the envelope, ‘31 Crosthwaite Park, Kingstown’.  Synge lived in a large Georgian town house in Kingstown, now Dun Laoghaire in Dublin, an area then noted for its middle- and upper-class Protestant Anglo Irish population, not unlike Synge’s own background.  In my exploration of correspondence being an influencing factor on Synge’s development of the play, this brought my attention to the importance of considering the context of the physical world from which Synge wrote the play.  Indeed, the society of Kingstown was the opposite end of the Irish societal spectrum from the Catholic, rural peasantry Synge was depicting.

While this envelope is not listed within most published notes of Synge’s writings, it is still a fascinating and revealing document on the development of one of Ireland’s most radical yet canonical plays.

Wayne Kavanagh, postgraduate student at the University of Birmingham

Samuel Beckett: the man and his afterlives

Actor Patrick Magee (1922-1982) in Krapp’s last tape.  (MS 11314) © BBC

Today’s post, by guest author and student of English literature Grace McLoughlin, is the sixth and final one in our series revealing undergraduate students’ reactions to working directly with the Library’s world renowned Samuel Beckett literary manuscripts. Again the Library thanks Dr Julie Bates, Assistant Professor in Irish Writing, in the Department of English.

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Writing about writing in Beckett

Beckett observes a rehearsal of Godot. (MS 11409).

Imogen McGuckin is the fifth of our guest blog authors in the  ‘Beckett afterlives’ series. All are students in the Department of English and all have kindly provided feedback on their experience of working directly with the library’s collection of Beckett literary archives. Imogen writes:

For a student of English Literature, the notebook in which Beckett penned ‘Imagination Dead Imagine’ offers an invaluable opportunity to investigate the authorial process behind the novel. At first glance, I struggled to see how anything emerged from a manuscript in which almost every paragraph has been crossed out. Even the front cover exhibits the original title – ‘FANCY DEAD DYING’ later eliminated by several lines of black marker and replaced by ‘IMAGINATION MORTE IMAGINEZ. However, a flick through the pages yielded many examples of the author’s prolific writing – and doodling, both in French and English.

For me, the value of this notebook lies not in what was written, but rather in what was retained and eliminated. Beckett’s imagery, rhythm and process of composition illuminate the meaning of the final text. Following consultation of both the manuscript and the first edition, I suggest that ‘Imagination Dead Imagine’ explores and experiments with the authorial creative process.

Unlike the Ussher Library – my usual library of preference, the Manuscripts & Archives Research Library allows only for you and the text. All baggage – literal and metaphorical, is deposited in a locker outside. My initial scan of Beckett’s notebook revealed that, for the most part, the left-hand pages showed disconnected lines of text and doodles, while the right-hand pages contained paragraphs of prose. For example, on page six the author writes; ‘and for how long, and for what if any purpose’, in a less italicised hand than the paragraphs opposite and partnered by a doodle of a stick-man. For the most part, Beckett’s handwriting is forward slanting – thus, the upright and vertical handwriting on page six indicated a chronological difference between the writing of this phrase, and those opposite. The author’s frustrated and questioning tone, together with his doodle, suggested Beckett was struggling creatively when he wrote on page six.

Beckett doodling. (MS 11223 p.6 ).

Further investigation of Beckett’s doodles made me wonder if, like me, Beckett was left-handed. I noticed the positioning of his drawings matched those in my own jotter. When left-handed, it is more comfortable to write on left-hand pages as those on the right involve uncomfortably resting your palm on the binding of the notebook. I briefly felt I had insight to a human side of Beckett. Sadly, while there are many references to Beckett’s cricketing prowess as a left-handed batsman, (and sometimes bowler), he was in fact right-handed.

The author’s floating lines, doodles and eventual paragraphs remained in my thoughts when I read the first edition of ‘Imagination Dead Imagine’. In the novel, Beckett’s syntax and punctuation manipulate the reader’s speed and flow. One example of this can be seen on:

‘It is possible too, experience shows, for rise and fall to stop short at any point and mark a pause, more or less long, before resuming, or reversing, the rise now fall, the fall rise’.

Here, the author’s rhythm and punctuation mirror the wording: after ‘mark a pause’ he inserts a comma, thus forcing his reader to pause. Furthermore, ‘the rise now fall, the fall rise’ causes the voice’s intonation to drop for the first half and rise on the second. The beginnings of this syllabic specificity are apparent on page eight of the manuscript, where he experiments with the words ‘… ne pas trop …’, by numbering them ‘9, 10, 11′ after their syllabic order. These then become ’11, 12, 13’ as Beckett inserts the word ‘tout’. The author’s study of syllables as seen in his notebook suggest he intended to manipulate his reader in the final version.

The central aspect of ‘Imagination Dead Imagine’ is the ‘plain rotunda, all white in the whiteness’. Through this image, Beckett explores a binary of light and dark which is continued by, ‘light and heat come back, all grows white and hot together, ground, wall, vault, bodies, say twenty seconds, all the greys, till the initial level is reached whence the fall began’. The rotunda through its whiteness suggests the untouched paper, while ‘the rise now fall, the fall rise’ describes the lifting and falling of the writer’s pen.

In a letter to Ethna McCarthy, Beckett described ‘the exercise-book that opens like a door and lets me far down into the now friendly dark’ (Fintan O’Toole, “Beckett in Love add link http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2015/04/02/beckett-in-love/). This concept of light and dark within the page forms much of Imagination’s imagery and is particularly pertinent when we consider how many lines of rejected material fill the author’s notebook. Phrases such as ‘Out of the door and down the road in the old hat & coat like after the war, no, not that again’, suggest an author struggling for new material. The refrain “not that again” appears repeatedly and indicates frustration in the author’s search for original thought. One phrase in support of this theory is “Out of the deathbed and drag it to a place to die in, that again”. The deathbed appearing in ‘Molloy’ and ‘Malone Dies’ is a frequent theme in Beckett’s prose and appears again on page thirty-three of the Imagination notebook. While Beckett’s imagery of light and dark within the rotunda mimics the rise and fall of the author’s pen, the punctuation and syllabic order manipulate his reader. As a result, my consultation of Beckett’s notebook illuminated how ‘Imagination Dead Imagine’ is a text about authorial creation itself.

Imogen McGuckin