Behind the Scenes: The Beckett Archive at Trinity College Dublin
Thursday, 1 August 2019, 11:30am – 1pm 
The Beckett Summer School is pleased to feature the first event in our "Behind the Scenes" series to examine the recent acquisitions of the Library of Trinity College Dublin, featuring expert presentations from archivist Jane Maxwell, who will discuss the newly donated Fizzles/Foirades volume with art by Jasper Johns, as well as the "San Quentin" material. Gerald Dawe and Eoin O'Brien will speak about the Leventhal/MacCarthy papers and their forthcoming volume reflecting this archival research. The conversation will be moderated by Julie Bates.
Gerald Dawe was born in Belfast in 1952 and lived for many years in the west of Ireland. His collections include The Lundys Letter, Sunday School, Heart of Hearts, The Morning Train, Lake Geneva, Points West, Selected Poems, Mickey Finn’s Air and, due in September, The Last Peacock – all published by The Gallery Press. He has also published several collections of essays, most recently, The Wrong Country (2018) and is currently preparing Critical Mass, a volume of his collected essays on Irish poetry. He has held the John J Burns Chair at Boston College, the Charles Heimbold Chair at Villanova University and has been Visiting Scholar at Pembroke College, Cambridge. Gerald Dawe is the founder-director of Trinity Oscar Wilde Centre (1998-2015), Professor Emeritus and Fellow of Trinity College Dublin. He lives in Dún Laoghaire.
Eoin O’Brien has published many scientific papers on hypertension research and he serves in an administrative capacity with a number of national and international bodies concerned with the global management of cardiovascular disease. He has written books on medical historical subjects, which include Conscience and Conflict: A Biography of Sir Dominic Corrigan, and A Portrait of Irish Medicine. He has also written books on Dublin writers and artists, including A.J Leventhal and Nevill Johnson. He wrote a biographical study on Samuel Beckett, who was his friend for many years, entitled The Beckett Country: Samuel Beckett’s Ireland, and he published Beckett’s first novel Dream of Fair to Middling Women in 1992. His latest book The Weight of Compassion & Other Essays has been published by Lilliput Press.
Dr Jane Maxwell is an archivist and is a manuscripts curator in the Research Collections department in Trinity College Library. She is the resident expert on, and an exhibitions curator for, the Beckett archives, the flagship collection among the literary manuscripts collection in Trinity College Library. Her other principal research interest is in women’s archives and women’s history and her recent PhD focused on the personal letter as a uniquely valuable source for Irish women’s history in the eighteenth century. She teaches classes in research methods using special collections and in artifactual literacy. She is a member of the Board of the Heritage Council of Ireland and one of the Governors and Guardians of Marsh’s Library.
Image courtesy of the Library of Trinity College. The public programme of the Samuel Beckett Summer School is generously supported by Dublin UNESCO/City of Literature and Larry and Mary Lund, as well as the Trinity Long Room Hub.
Tickets are free, but advance booking is advised. If you wish to make a contribution to future Beckett Summer School activities, please select "donation" on the ticketing options; 100% of all proceeds from donations go to the tenth anniversary Summer School (2020) public programme.
Campus Location: Trinity Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Research Institute
Accessibility: Yes
Room: Neill Lecture Theatre
Research Theme: Creative Arts Practice, Manuscript, Book and Print Culture
Event Category: Public
Type of Event: One-time event
Audience: Public
Cost: Register here: bit.ly…
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