UCD LIBRARY CULTURAL HERITAGE COLLECTIONS
Welcome to the UCD Library Cultural Heritage Collections blog. Discover and explore the historical treasures housed within our Archives, Special Collections, National Folklore Collection and Digital Library
February 2nd marks the 138th birthday of UCD’S most famous alumnus, James Joyce, who was born in 1882. UCD Special Collections holds an important collection of Joyce letters and signed editions which are part of a larger collection that belonged to Joyce’s UCD classmate Constantine Curran and his wife Helen Laird Curran. Although these letters …
Continue reading "Classmates, Correspondents, Counterparts: James Joyce and Conn Curran"
Happy New Year to all our followers! We are delighted to welcome you all back to what we hope will be another year of riveting blog posts. So to kick off 2020 let's learn about... Catherine A Murphy was an American academic based a Merrimack College in Massachusetts. Prominent among her academic work was the …
With the Month of Merriment arriving tomorrow, so too does the tradition of the advent calendar. And here at UCD Cultural Heritage Collections we are not ones to shirk away from tradition! So for the month of December we will be showcasing festive material from UCD Special Collections, National Folklore Collection and UCD Archives on …
The writer Mary Lavin (1912-1996) was born in East Walpole, Massachusetts to Irish parents Thomas and Nora Lavin, and moved to Ireland as a child. Her first short story was written on the reverse of a draft of her PhD thesis on Virginia Woolf, and she went on to become a prolific and celebrated author, …
Continue reading "Mary Lavin: An insight into the creative process"
On October 13th 2019, Cardinal John Henry Newman, first rector of the Catholic University of Ireland, will be canonised in Rome. The Catholic University of Ireland (CUI) was opened in 1854 and it is from this institution that University College Dublin traces its origins. The CUI was established as a result of opposition from the …
Few people need to be convinced about the magnificence of ancient and modern Rome, but for almost two hundred years the magnificence of the eighteenth-century engraver, Giuseppe Vasi da Corleone, went under the radar. In recent decades, scholarly attention has turned to Vasi's life and works. Giuseppe Vasi was born in 1710, in Corleone, Sicily. …
Following his untimely passing in December 2012, the personal library of the poet and critic Dennis O'Driscoll was bequeathed to University College Dublin. His wife, the poet Julie O'Callaghan, facilitated delivery of the extensive collection to UCD Library in 2017. The lion's share of O'Driscoll's library now resides in UCD Special Collections where it forms …
On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed the Apollo Lunar Module (Eagle) on the moon, as Michael Collins orbited the moon in the command module (Pilot). Apollo 11 was launched by a Saturn V rocket from Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island, Florida, on July 16 and returned to Earth on July …
Books are inconspicuous – readily available objects that we see daily, and that line the shelves of our homes and offices. Items that some of us treasure, or collect in great numbers. This, of course, makes a book the perfect place to hide secrets. We see this time and again, with a concealed gun featuring …
On 24th April 2019 and exhibition of the archive of the renowned Irish playwright Frank McGuinness was launched in UCD Special Collections. The exhibition displays handwritten and typescript drafts of McGuinness's most well-known and critically acclaimed plays including The Factory Girls, Someone Who'll Watch Over Me and Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the …
Continue reading "Frank McGuinness: From Creativity to Legacy"