About this Event
In this Library special, we uncover some fascinating ‘lost’ stories from the pages of the Library collections. Presenter Ciarán Murray will be joined by Jane Maxwell, Manuscripts Curator, Manuscripts & Archives Research Collections, Trinity College Dublin and Tony Flynn, PHD candidate, School of English.
Dr Maxwell will discuss the day-to-day lives of a 19th century Summerhill couple. While the Husband, John D’Alton, is well known from his public life and historical publications, some 250 letters of their correspondence contain all we know of his wife Catherine, as she manages the household, the children, and her husband's business affairs in his absence. These are affectionate and witty letters, filled with the practicalities of a middle-class Catholic family in Dublin from 1815 to 1853.
In his research into the Pollard Collection of children's books, Tony Flynn found an inscription in the book The Story-Spinner, written by a girl called ‘Annie Faires’, who lived at 5 Northbrook Road. Annie Faires was a thirteen-year-old orphan at the time of writing this inscription, and she was staying at Northbrook Road in 1921 after her school on Mespil Road had been closed due in part to changing economic conditions in the aftermath of the war. Tony will tell Ciarán about Annie Faires’s ‘lost’ story and about the potential of books to keep their promises to their owners and tell their stories too.
Jane Maxwell is a senior curator in the Research Collections Department of Manuscripts & Archives in the Library of Trinity College Dublin. Holding a PhD in early modern Irish women’s history, her particular area of professional interest is in women’s archives from the 18th – 20th centuries. She has worked with a diverse range of collections in the Library, including the literary archives of poet Eiléan Ní Chuillenáin and the papers of Samuel Beckett. Jane has published and taught on the Library’s manuscript collection and is part of the curatorial team responsible for the display of the Book of Kells.
Tony Flynn is a researcher of marginalia, inscriptions, and other marks of use found in early twentieth-century books from the Pollard Collection of Children’s Books and Pollard Schoolbook Collection. He is the Co-Curator of the digital exhibit “Childish Transformations: marginalia and more in the Pollard Collections” which recently launched on the Library of Trinity College website.
This talk will be subsequently broadcast on Near FM. You can listen to Near FM online www.nearfm.ie/livestream or on 90.3FM.
Performances by An Góilín Traditional Singing Club.
These events and subsequent radio series are supported by Coimisiún na Meán with the Television licence fee.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Unit 18 Trinity in the Community, Unit 18, TTEC, Dublin 2, Ireland
EUR 0.00
