This addition to our Decade of Centenaries series focuses on a small collection belonging to Caitlín Brugha, member of the Gaelic League, active member of the 1916 Rising, Sinn Féin TD and wife of Cathal Brugha. Caitlín Brugha, was born Catherine Mary Kingston, on 9 December 1879 at Birr, Co. Offaly. She was educated at … Continue reading DOC Series: Caitlín Brugha
Librarians have a very mixed attitude to markings, underlining, or scribbling on books. In most cases it is frowned upon. In one infamous case from the 1960s, the British playwright Joe Orton served six months in gaol for defacing books from Islington Public Library. However, in other cases, far from being viewed as vandalism, ‘markings’ … Continue reading Providential Provenance
Tomás Ó Muircheartaigh was one of Ireland’s most prolific photographers of the early 20th century. He’s perhaps best remembered for capturing the everyday life of ordinary people living in Ireland’s rural districts. Ó Muircheartaigh was born in Dublin in 1907. His father Tomás and his mother Bríd Ní Mathúna both worked as teachers in the … Continue reading The Ethnologist’s Eye
Students across Ireland, and further afield, are in the depths of studying and/or exams. We feel their pain. We too have been through the torturous hours of study followed by those terrifying few seconds at the beginning of an exam when your brain goes blank! It will do all students good to remember that the … Continue reading The dreaded examiner’s red pen!
'Walter has been Mother, Father and ideal friend to me. I could not have lived through those days of stress without his unexampled care and princely hospitality.' During the Treaty debates in 1922 these words were spoken by Arthur Griffith to H.E. Kenny about his dear friend, Alderman Walter Leonard Cole. Not long after, on … Continue reading Mother, Father and Ideal Friend
In 1960 the New York Public Library sued Peter Kavanagh, for reproducing the letters of John Quinn which they held in their care. The letters were transferred to the library in 1924. Under an agreement between the library and Quinn’s estate they were not to be published until 1988. Peter Kavanagh decided to ignore this … Continue reading The Lion, the Letters and a Kavanagh