Skip to main content

Trinity College Dublin, The University of Dublin

Menu Search

Uncovering EPB’s ‘dirty’ Irish books

By Dr Christina Morin, joint Visiting Research Fellow in Trinity College Dublin Library and Cambridge University Library

In the summer of 2023, I was awarded the TCD- Cambridge Short-Term Visiting Research Fellowship, which allowed me valuable time over the autumn semester to delve into the Irish literature collections in Trinity’s Early Printed Books. My research was focused on progressing my current monograph project, Irish Gothic in the Global Nineteenth Century, which explores the impact of Romantic-era Irish gothic fiction in the literary marketplace of the long nineteenth century. It concentrates in particular on Irish-authored novels published by the London-based Minerva Press in the period c. 1790-1830, including, for instance, Regina Maria Roche’s The Children of the Abbey (1796), Catharine Selden’s The English Nun (1797), and Charles Lucas’s The Infernal Quixote (1801). Despite evidence of their widespread popular appeal in the long nineteenth century, these publications occupy a marginal position in the historiography of the Romantic period. This is due, in large part, to Minerva’s contemporary reputation: the press fell afoul of Romantic-era efforts to define – and safeguard – ‘high’ or elite literature in the midst of an alarmingly precipitous increase in novel publication. The enduring critical view of Minerva publications as little more than ‘trash’ intended for undiscriminating circulating library readers has meant their exclusion from conventional literary canons and, accordingly, an occlusion of their real significance in the development of nineteenth-century reading publics.

Against traditional critical dismissal of Minerva, Irish Gothic in the Global Nineteenth Century aims to understand what average readers actually thought about Irish Minerva fictions. It thus concentrates, in Robert Darnton’s terms, on ‘what books reached readers …. and… how readers made sense of them’ as a way of better understanding ‘the actual experience of literature in the past’ 1. One way it seeks to understand how readers engaged with Irish Minerva texts is via marginalia and provenance marks, including, for instance, handwritten comments, doodles, bookplates, owners’ signatures, and other evidence of readerly interaction with and response to these works. Kathryn M. Rudy writes about how the ‘signs of use and wear on [the] surfaces’ of literary texts might help us learn about ‘the habits, private rituals, and emotional states of people who lived in the … past’ 2. She calls these marked up works ‘dirty’, which is a particularly compelling idea when thinking about Irish Minerva fictions because it captures the material history of these works at the same time that it upends their negative reputation. In other words, these books are ‘dirty’ not because they are – as Romantic-era critics had it – sub-literary trash not worth reading, but precisely because they have so incontrovertibly been read and enjoyed.

TCD’s Irish Minerva editions are generally not first editions published in London, but cheaper reprints produced by Irish printers, despite the imposition of English copyright law on Ireland following the Anglo-Irish Union (1801). They are also not legal deposit copies, as might be expected of editions from 1801 onwards,3 but later acquisitions, several of them belonging to the Pollard Collection.4 Within these works, the most common forms of readerly engagement are bookplates and ownership signatures, as is evident in the multiple Irish re-prints of Roche’s bestselling The Children of the Abbey (1796), all of which bear inscriptions. An 1809, two-volume edition printed by Dublin-based Patrick Wogan – one of the few prominent Catholic printers of the day – was owned by Colonel Pratt, Cabra Castle, Co. Cavan (fig. 1).5

Figure 1: Owner’s signature on The Children of the Abbey (5th ed.; Dublin: P. Wogan, 1809)

A later, mid-century edition also printed in Dublin, this time by Christopher M. Warren6, is inscribed ‘P.F. Flynn, P.P’ (probably ‘parish priest’) (fig. 2).

Figure 2: Owner’s signature on The Children of the Abbey (Dublin: C.W. Warren, [1846]). Copy B

Meanwhile an 1835 Belfast edition printed by Joseph Smyth appears to have had at least two separate owners (fig. 3).

Figure 3: Owners’ signatures on The Children of the Abbey (12th ed.; Belfast: Joseph Smyth, 1835)

Marginalia are less common, though the editions of Roche’s The Children of the Abbey considered here also contain one or two of these. The Warren edition (copy B), for example, shows a pencilled ‘x’ on the closing page, suggesting a reader indicating – to themselves or others – that they have read the book (fig. 4).

Figure 4: Pencil mark on the final page of The Children of the Abbey (Dublin: C.M. Warren, [1846]). Copy B

And, in the Wogan edition, there is a brief summary of the reader’s thoughts on the final page: ‘A most interesting, well written novel, but the most unnatural!!!’ (fig. 5).

Figure 5: A reader’s note at the end of The Children of the Abbey (5th ed.; Dublin: P. Wogan, 1809)

These marginalia offer a glimpse – however fleeting – into how, in H. J. Jackson’s terms, ‘minor or unknown readers’7 perceived and interacted with the Irish Minerva novels they read.

Perhaps the most intriguing piece of readerly interaction with these editions that I have found is this prayer card inserted into volume 3 of the Warren edition (copy A) (fig. 6).

Figure 6: Prayer card inserted into The Children of the Abbey (Dublin: C.W. Warren, [1846]). Copy A

The card seems to have been used as a bookmark, and close examination suggests that it is printed on paper very similar to that of the book itself, indicating that it may have been produced by Warren for distribution at his premises. Like many eighteenth- and early-nineteenth century printers, Warren supplemented the printing of books with other printing work; in particular, as Niall Ó’Ciosáin observes,  ‘Warren was printer to a number of Catholic institutions such as the Carmelite Order … the Catholic Book Society… and the Purgatorian Society’.8 He was also a prolific publisher of popular fiction, catering, as this edition of The Children of the Abbey suggests, to a burgeoning middle-class Catholic readership. The link that this edition makes between The Children of the Abbey, the Minerva Press, and Irish Catholic readers becomes even more intriguing when we consider that not one but two of the editions of The Children of the Abbey in TCD’s collections were published by printers who were clearly Catholic or had strong links to Catholicism. TCD’s Irish Minervas clearly have a lot to tell us about a very particular reading community in early-nineteenth century Ireland.

The Importance of Being Oscar

TCD MS 11437/2/1/3: Portrait photograph of Oscar Wilde by Robert W. Thrupp, Birmingham [1884]. Autographed by OW.
TCD MS 11437/2/1/3: Portrait photograph of Oscar Wilde by Robert W. Thrupp, Birmingham [1884]. Autographed by OW.

Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), the influential Anglo-Irish playwright, is one of Trinity’s most famous and celebrated historical alumni. The Oscar Wilde Collection (TCD MS 11437), an important resource held in the Manuscripts & Archives Research Library, has recently been catalogued and conserved. Wilde continues to inspire interest and excitement among researchers and the general public, and it is hoped that a schedule of events to promote this fascinating archive will take place in the Library of Trinity College in 2017. Continue reading “The Importance of Being Oscar”

Love, treason and revenge at the medieval French Court

These subjects form the plot of the novel Freida the Jongleur (London, 1857), a manuscript draft copy of which is held in the Manuscripts & Archives Research Library.

Ms 10870, folio 191
TCD MS 10870, folio 191

The story takes place in France during the reign of Philippe IV le Bel (1285-1314) and of his sons Louis and Philip. Freida, a pagan jongleur (an itinerant minstrel), travels from Acre in Palestine to France. She witnesses court life and the torments of the end of a glorious era. She is confronted with love, treason, Christianity, and the quest for revenge, following the execution of her son Eldrid. I dare say that, from an historical point of view, the author took some liberty, even if the principal events are well known. Written in a romantic and sentimental style, this historical novel fits well into one trend of nineteenth-century literature.

The author of this novel was an Anglo-Irish woman named Barbara Hemphill (d. 1858). Her father, Patrick Hare, was the rector of Golden, co. Tipperary. In 1807, she married John Hemphill and had five children. One of her sons, the lawyer and politician Charles, became the first Baron Hemphill in 1906. Barbara

TCD MS 10870, folio 262(i)
TCD MS 10870, folio 262(i)

Hemphill had already been writing for quite a while when she was encouraged to publish her work by a family connection, antiquarian Thomas Crofton Croker. Her first story appeared in the Dublin University Magazine in 1838 with the title of ‘The Royal Confession, A Monastic Legend’. Then came her first novel, Lionel Deerhurst; or, Fashionable Life under the Regency (London, 1846). It was published anonymously, although the Countess of Blessington, another well-known author, was identified as the editor. Success arrived with her second novel, The Priest’s Niece; or, the heirship of Barnulph (London, 1855), which quickly went to a second edition. This success encouraged Hemphill to identify herself as the author of Freida the Jongleur (London, 1857).

TCD MS 10870, folio 477
TCD MS 10870, folio 477

The Papers of Barbara Hemphill (TCD MS 10869-72) were purchased at auction by M&ARL in 1995. In addition to the manuscript of Freida the Jongleur, the collection also contains a manuscript draft copy of The Priest’s Niece, as well as fair copies of two additional (unpublished) works: Ella of the field of Waterloo and Feud of the Ormond and Desmond. For further information, please contact M&ARL.

Léonore Pinoteau – GdeLinares
Trainee Curator & Intern
Manuscripts & Archives Research Library

A portrait of his love

It isn’t everyday that one finds oneself – as an archivist in an academic library – handling a piece of artwork by an internationally renowned painter. But that is what your humble author was doing recently.

Among our collections are the papers of Canon James Owen Hannay (1865-1950), Church of Ireland clergyman and, under the pseudonym George A. Birmingham, also a novelist. Hannay tried in his work to reflect with honesty the complex social circumstances he experienced in Ireland. However as a Protestant clergyman criticising any aspect of Catholic life, his early works attracted criticism. He was the target of a boycott, and he felt he had to withdraw from the Gaelic League in the wake of protests about the tour of his successful play General John Regan. Later Hannay found his métier when he deployed his comic voice; he was a gifted farceur whose philosophy was that ‘if we didn’t extract food for laughter out of failure we should go under’. Recently his reputation as a shrewd observer of the Irish society of his day has revived (Dict.Ir.Biog).

Photograph by Bassano, 23 March 1927. (The National Portrait Gallery).
Photograph by Bassano, 23 March 1927. (The National Portrait Gallery).

In 1889 he married his third cousin Adelaide Susan ‘Ada’ Wynne (d. 1933), with whom he claimed literally to have fallen ‘in love at first sight’. They had a happy marriage and four children. Adelaide shared her husband’s scholarly pursuits; his devotion to patristic study led to his appointment as Donnellan lecturer for 1901 at Trinity. These lectures, instituted in 1794 by the bequest of musician and woman-about-town Anne Donnellan, were initially held under the auspices of the School of Hebrew, Biblical and Theological Studies. Hannay’s lectures  were subsequently published as The spirit and origin of Christian monasticism (1903).

As part of the Library’s continuing engagement with the College’s Decade of Commemoration activities, the Hannay papers were prioritised for conservation treatment; Hannay served as an army chaplain from 1915 to 1918 and his experiences are described in A padre in France (1918). While the papers were being prepared for transfer to the Department of Preservation and Conservation an illustrated letter was noticed, in a strangely familiar hand; familiar in the sense of being almost illegible and yet recognisably the hand of Jack B.Yeats. The item had been correctly described by the cataloguer in the ’60s, but hadn’t been indexed under the artist’s name. So a would-be researcher would only find it if, like the Isla de Muerta in the Pirates of the Caribbean*, she already knew where it was.

Letter from J.B.Yeats to Ada Hannay. (MS 3457/28)
Letter from J.B.Yeats to Ada Hannay.
(MS 3457/28)

This is a letter to Ada Hannay in which Yeats thanks her for her criticism – not of his art surely? – and hopes that her husband will soon visit to give Yeats ‘a good opportunity’ presumably to sketch him. The postscript reads: ‘I send you here with suggestions for hanging those sketches’. When the letter is turned upside down we can see Yeats’ sketch of the Hannay family struggling to examine poorly hung paintings. While most of the figures are hurriedly drawn, the picture includes an attractive portrait sketch of Mrs Hannay, observing her young daughters.

'A certain kind of portrait should be hung either very high up or very low down'.
‘A certain kind of portrait should be hung either very high up or very low down’.

Irish writers, possibly particularly Anglo-Irish writers, have long been the subject of enthusiastic research by Japanese scholars. James Hannay is no different. One such scholar is Masahito Yahaka , Director of the Department of Community Studies, Beppu University Junior College, who has visited Trinity on several occasions and whom we hope to welcome again next year as a Long Room HUB Fellow. He says he was attracted to Hannay ‘because he wrote about the conflict between Nationalists and Unionists with humour. He teaches how important humour is to solve human conflicts and to lead a meaningful life’. Masahito Yahaka maintains a website dedicated to Birmingham.

* Popular cultural reference (!).

Jane Maxwell