National Library of Ireland - Blog Post

I have just written another blog post on the official blog of the National Library of Ireland (NLI). It is about the Art Ó Bríain Papers - a collection of papers that I have been researching as part of my PhD research.

The previous blog post that I wrote on the NLI's official blog was about the French journalist, Simone Téry (1897-1967), who traveled to Ireland in the 1920s and wrote about it in the French press. It is available to read here.

 

Photograph of Art Ó Bríain (O'Brien) (1872-1949).

Art Ó Bríain was the London representative of the First Dáil in London from 1919 to 1922. If you are interested in finding out more about Art Ó Bríain, why not have a look at his entry on the Dictionary of Irish Biography, or take a look at the biography section of the Art Ó Bríain Papers collection list on the National Library of Ireland's website: http://www.nli.ie/pdfs/mss%20lists/150_OBriain.pdf

You could also check out the Documents on Irish Foreign Policy website, where you can easily search for documents written by, or to, O'Brien / Ó Bríain. All sorts of correspondence, including memos and letters written by and to Ó Bríain have been digitized and they give us an amazing insight into what was happening in Ireland at the time.

 

Photograph of the Manuscripts Department of the National Library of Ireland on Kildare Street, Dublin.

List of Oliver O'Hanlon's Publications and Writings, etc.

This is a list of the various book chapters, book reviews, blog posts and newspaper articles that I have written over the last couple of years. I will try to keep it updated with any new material that I write.

Image source.

ACADEMIC WRITING

Book Chapters & Case Studies:

·         Book Chapter - ‘Simone Téry, Une Française en Irlande’, in La France et l'Irlande: Destins Croisés, ed. by Catherine Maignant. (Villeneuve d’Ascq: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 2013). Link here

·        Book Chapter - ‘Henri Béraud’s flâneur salarié abroad in Ireland’, in The Flâneur Abroad: Historical and International Perspectives, ed. by Richard Wrigley. (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014). Link here
·        Case Study - ‘Press coverage from abroad’in Atlas of the Irish Revolution, ed. by John Crowley, Donal Ó Drisceoil and Mike Murphy (Cork: Cork University Press, 2017). Link here

Book Reviews:

·        Book review of Le Récit aujourd’hui, in Irish Journal of French Studies, 13 (2013), 182-184.

     [DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7173/164913313809455648] Link here

·        Book review of Nation / Nazione: Irish Nationalism and the Italian Risorgimento, in Irish Studies Review, 23/1 (2014), 98-100. [DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09670882.2014.955952] Link here
·        Book review of The Bordeaux-Dublin Letters 1757: Correspondence of an Irish Community Abroad, in Irish Studies Review, 24/2 (2016), 230-231. [DOI: 10.1080/09670882.2016.1147138] Link here
·        Book review of Models for Movers: Irish Women's Emigration to America, in Irish Studies Review, 25/4 (2017), 518-520. [DOI: 10.1080/09670882.2017.1365573] Link here

  

OTHER WRITING

Newspaper Articles:

·        ‘Around the world in 63 days’, An Irishman’s Diary, Irish Times, 27 August 2013, p. 13. Link

·        ‘A lock of hair’, An Irishman’s Diary, Irish Times, 14 October 2013, p. 15. Link

·        ‘Mary Poppins – The Irish Connection’, An Irishman’s Diary, Irish Times, 23 November 2013, p. 15. Link

·        ‘The Irishmen who fought for the pope’, An Irishman’s Diary, Irish Times, 1 November 2014, p. 17. Link

·        ‘An Irishman’s on Friedrich Engles and Ireland’, An Irishman’s Diary, Irish Times, 25 June 2015, p. 15. Link
·        ‘A Corkman’s Philanthropy, An Irishman’s Diary, Irish Times, 7 July 2015, p. 15. Link
·       ‘An Irishman’s Diary on pioneering French journalist Albert Londres’, An Irishman’s Diary, Irish Times, 30 July 2015, p. 13. Link
·      ‘An Irishman’s Diary on George Bernard Shaw and the National Gallery of Ireland’, An Irishman’s Diary, Irish Times, 2 September 2015, p. 15. Link
·      ‘An Irishman’s Diary: The extraordinary journey of Jules Verne’s Irish orphan’, An Irishman’s Diary, Irish Times, 29 October 2015, p. 15. Link
·        ‘An Irishman’s Diary on Alexis de Tocqueville and Ireland in 1835’, An Irishman’s Diary, Irish Times, 29 December 2015, p. 13. Link 
·        ‘An Irishman’s Diary on Susan Langstaff Mitchell, a pioneering Irish writer and journalist’, An Irishman’s Diary, Irish Times, 4 April 2016, p. 17. Link
·        ‘An Irishman’s Diary on Edwin Lawrence Godkin, the Irish-born newspaper editor who took on Tammany Hall’, An Irishman’s Diary, Irish Times, 18 May 2016, p. 15. Link
·        ‘An Irishman’s Diary on the 1911 Michelin Guide to the British Isles’, An Irishman’s Diary, Irish Times, 4 July 2016, p. 15. Link
·        ‘An Irishman’s Diary about Kenelm Lee Guinness, racing driver and pioneering engineer’, An Irishman’s Diary, Irish Times, 19 July 2016, p. 13. Link
·        ‘An Irishman’s Diary on Patrice Flynn, a Franco-Irish Catholic bishop who never forgot his roots’, An Irishman’s Diary, Irish Times, 5 January 2017, p. 13. Link
·        ‘Faithful unto death’ - An Irishman’s Diary on the Somme’s Chinese Cemetery’, An Irishman’s Diary, Irish Times, 7 February 2017, p. 15. Link
·        ‘An Irishman’s Diary on the revolutionary art of May Guinness’, An Irishman’s Diary, Irish Times, 20 March 2017, p. 13. Link
·        ‘Great shakes - An Irishman’s Diary on Daly’s Bridge and sport by the Lee, An Irishman’s Diary, Irish Times, 20 May 2017, p. 15. Link
·        ‘Book shows how overseas reporters highlighted the Irish Revoilution as it happened’, Irish Examiner, 6 September 2017, p. 12. Link
·        ‘Going to France’s aid - An Irishman’s Diary on Hugh Murphy and Laleu’, An Irishman’s Diary, Irish Times, 12 December 2017, p. 13. Link
·        ‘Still in the post after 260 years - An Irishman’s Diary on a treasure trove of undelivered letters’, An Irishman’s Diary, Irish Times, 17 March 2018, p. 17. Link
·        ‘‘The Queen of the Air’ - An Irishman’s Diary on aviation pioneer Amy Johnson’, An Irishman’s Diary, Irish Times, 5 April 2018, p. 13. Link
·        ‘Butter days - An Irishman’s Diary on the Cork Butter Exchange and the world’s largest butter market’, An Irishman’s Diary, Irish Times, 15 May 2018, p. 13. Link

·        ‘An Irishman’s Diary on a place par excellence for art and pet-lovers’, An Irishman’s Diary, Irish Times, 26 June 2018, p. 13. Link
·        ‘‘Full steam ahead’ - An Irishman’s Diary on the SS ‘Sirius’, the first steamship to cross the Atlantic from Europe to North America place par excellence for art and pet-lovers’, An Irishman’s Diary, Irish Times, 23 July 2018, p. 13. Link
·        ‘‘A garden of gardens’ - An Irishman’s Diary on Ilnacullin (Garinish Island)’, An Irishman’s Diary, Irish Times, 4 September 2018, p. 13. Link

Online newspaper article:
     ·        ‘From boulevards to barricades: a flâneur’s guide to Ireland’s War of Independence’, Irish Times online, 28 April 2015 Link. Podcast of an interview I did on the flâneur & Ireland with Hugh Linehan & Fionn Davenport of the Irish Times, Link


Magazine articles: 
     ·        ‘French bishop’s mission to Ireland, October 1916’, History Ireland, Sept-Oct 2016, p. 24-26. Link
     ·        ‘‘A Milestone’ in the Civil War’, The Revolution Papers, 20 December 2016, p. 2. Link 
     ·        ‘Carl Marstrander: Viking of the Blaskets’, Ireland’s Own, 13 July 2018, p. 31. Link

Blog Posts:

·        ‘Simone Téry, the ‘Human Question Mark’ in Ireland’. 1,200 word blog post with images on the National Library of Ireland’s official blog, published online February 2013. Link here

·      ‘It’s not all just books and letters: The Art Ó Bríain papers at the National Library of Ireland’. Blog post on the National Library of Ireland’s official blog, published online December 2014. Link here

UCC Postgraduate Student Journal article:

·        ‘Ireland through French Eyes: Reports from Ireland in French Newspapers in the 20^th Century’. Short article describing my research topic to a general audience, published online in Vol. 2 of the UCC Boolean Postgraduate Student Journal. October 2011. Link here

NPHFI 2014 Conference - University College Cork

The 2014 Annual Conference of the Newspaper and Periodical History Forum of Ireland NPHFI took place in University College Cork (UCC) on 21 & 22 November 2014. As Secretary of the Forum, I had a bit of work to do in organising the conference.

The conference was opened by the NPHFI Chairman, Dr Mark O'Brien and delegates were welcomed to UCC by the Head of the UCC School of History, Prof David Ryan. The Chairman of the Irish Examiner newspaper, Mr Tom Crosbie, also welcomed the conference delegates to Cork.

The conference theme was: 'Home thoughts from abroad: History, the Press and Diaspora'. I suppose diaspora is something that Irish people know a great deal about, with generations of Irish having been forced to move abroad in search of work and a better life.

Speakers came from universities in Ireland, UK, USA and Australia to present papers on how the link between Ireland and the Irish around the world was maintained over generations by means of the newspaper and the periodical.

The plenary speech was delivered by Prof. Donal McCracken, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, who spoke about Irish edited newspaper in South Africa. There's a short piece on the conference on the Evening Echo website here.

Details of the 2015 conference will be announced soon on the NPHFI website http://newspapersperiodicals.org/ and Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/NPHistoryForum

59th Cork Film Festival - documentary film: 'Séamus Murphy: A Quiet Revolution'

The 59th Cork Film Festival has just started. It runs from the 7th to the 16th of November 2014. I have already attended two screenings and I'd like to write about one of them here.

The title of the documentary film that I saw this morning was: "Séamus Murphy: A Quiet Revolution". It told the story of Cork born sculptor and stone carver Séamus Murphy RHA (1907-1975). The Irish writer and academic, Daniel Corkery was one of Murphy's teachers in school and it was Corkery who gave Murphy his first drawing lessons.

Murphy studied modeling at the Crawford Municipal School Art in Cork on Corkery's advice. He later attended night classes there and won a Gibson Bequest scholarship in 1931. With this scholarship, Murphy went to Paris in 1932-33, but doesn't seem to have enjoyed his time there. According to the documentary, Murphy found that his fellow artists in Paris were more interested in discussing art rather than actually making it.

Crawford Municipal School of Art, Cork (now Crawford Art Gallery), where Séamus Murphy learnt his trade.

Séamus Murphy's work can be seen all over Cork and throughout Ireland. He exhibited at the New York World's Fair in 1939 and was elected as a member of the RHA in 1954. He was commissioned to do sculptures in churches and he also created busts of politicians. However, he also had to do 'ordinary' work to earn a living. He created headstones for graves and this work can be seen in graveyards all over Cork. A list of his major works can be viewed here and a biography can be viewed here.

Bust of Michael Collins by Séamus Murphy in Fitzgerald's Park, Cork.

Watching the documentary, I was reminded of the brilliant RTÉ television series 'Hands', which looked at different traditional Irish crafts. I just want to say well done to the filmmaker for creating such an interesting film about a person I had not heard of before and well done to the Cork Film Festival for showing it.

An Irishman's Diary - The Irishmen who fought for the pope

Today, Saturday, 1 November 2014 sees the publication of my latest Irishman's Diary article in the Irish Times. It's about the Irishmen who served in the Papal Army in 1860. Numbers vary, but it is generally accepted that at least 1,000 Irishmen made their way to Italy to fight for the pope.

Pope Pius IX blessing his troops in St Peter's Square, Rome before the Capture of Rome, April 1870. Image source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pioixblesstroup.jpg

The men were recruited throughout Ireland to defend the pope's temporal authority (in other words the Papal States), which was being threatened by troops of King Victor Emmanuel who wanted to unify Italy.

It sounds strange these days, but from around the 8th century CE, the pope was the ruler of a vast stretch of land in central Italy, known as the Papal States. It ceased to exist in 1870 when Italy was unified. The Risorgimento, which was led by men such as Giuseppe Mazzini, Count Cavour, Giuseppe Garibaldi and Victor Emmanuel, saw Italy transformed from several small states into one Kingdom of Italy.

The Irish and the other papal army volunteers from France, Switzerland, Austria and Belgium were not welcomed by the inhabitants of the Papal States, who saw the men as an invading force supporting a bad government.

It may seem ironic that while some Irishmen were fighting for freedom from Britain at home in Ireland, other Irishmen would go to Italy and support another big power that was oppressing people, but the religious dimension undoubtedly blinded the Irishmen who fought for the pope to what was actually going on. They simply felt justified in fighting for the pope.

Front page of Irish Times newspaper, Saturday 1 November 2014.

FURTHER READING
If you are interested in finding out more about this topic, I would recommend that you have a look at the following sources:

• G.F.-H. Berkeley, The Irish Battalion in the Papal Army of 1860 (Dublin: Talbot Press, 1929).

• Robert Doyle, 'The pope's Irish battalion, 1860', History Ireland, Vol. 18, 2010. Available to view here.

• Ian Kenneally, Courage and Conflict: Forgotten Stories of the Irish at War (Cork: The Collins Press, 2009).

• Des Ryan, 'The Pope's Emigrants', The Old Limerick Journal, Vol. 39, 2003. Available to view here.

ADEFFI 2014 Annual Conference

The 2014 Annual Association des Études Françaises et Francophones d'Irlande ADEFFI Conference took place in the Long Room Hub in Trinity College, Dublin between 17-19 October 2014.

The conference theme this year was Origines / Origins. Almost fifty speakers came from all over Europe and North America, as well as Australia and South Africa, to present papers on their own areas of research.

They drew on a diverse range of genres and sciences such as literature, film, philosophy, anthropology, poetry and history, to discuss origines / origins. As usual, attendees included a mix of established academics and researchers and some PhD students or newly appointed lecturers.

The guest of honour at the conference was the French novelist, Anne-Marie Garat, who won the Prix Femina for her 1992 novel, Aden.

Next year's conference will take place in the University of Limerick. Keep an eye on the Association's website www.adeffi.ie and Facebook page www.facebook.com/adeffi for more information.

Book Review - Irish Studies Review

My review of the book Nation/Nazione: Irish Nationalism & The Italian Risorgimento (Dublin: UCD Press, 2013) has just been published on the website of the journal Irish Studies Review. Here is the DOI: 10.1080/09670882.2014.955952

It was refreshing to look at a book based on Italo-Irish relations, rather than Franco-Irish studies, which I normally work on. It seems to me that Ireland's relationship with France is quite different from that with Italy.

We've seen that at crucial moments throughout Irish history, Irish people have looked to France for help. An example of this would be the 1798 Rebellion, when Wolfe Tone and The Society of United Irishmen sought and received French military assistance to stage an uprising against British rule in Ireland. I don't think we could say that the same kind of relationship exists / existed between Italy and Ireland.

Nevertheless, there have been a good number of significant cultural, religious and military connections between Ireland and Italy down through the years. For example, James Caulfeild, 1st Earl of Charlemont, who built the architectural gem that is the Casino at Marino in Dublin, traveled extensively in Italy. He spoke the language like a local, admired the country immensely and was greatly inspired by its architecture and customs.

The following book, Italian presence in Ireland: a contribution to Irish-Italian relations (Dublin: Istituto Italiano di Cultura, 1964), would provide readers with an introduction to the area. It was published to mark the 10th anniversary of the founding of the Italian Institute of Culture in Dublin. 

According to an article in the Irish Independent from 8 January 1955, five hundred people applied for membership of the Institute in the first few weeks after it opened. They were only expecting one hundred and fifty. It seems that Irish interest in Italy is nothing new!

Dorothea Lange in Ireland - 60 years ago

The American photographer, Dorothea Lange (1895-1965), is perhaps best known for her poignant photographs of migrant families and farm workers in 1930s America. She captured the faces of migrants who had traveled to California from the Midwest of America in search of work and a better life.

This photograph of Florence Owens Thompson surrounded by some of her children was taken at a camp for migrant farm workers in Nipomo, California in 1936.

Image source: http://loc.gov/pictures/resource/fsa.8b29516/

Lange's first trip outside of the USA was to Ireland. In 1954 Dorothea Lange traveled to Ireland on assignment with Life Magazine with her journalist son Daniel Dixon (1925-2009).

While they spent some time in Dublin initially, they were in County Clare for the majority of the one month that they spent in Ireland. Over the course of their stay, Lange took some 2,400 photographs, which are now held in the Dorothea Lange Collection at the Oakland Museum of California. These photos can be viewed online at the University of California's calisphere website.

A nine page article entitled Irish Country People was published in Life Magazine on 21 March 1955. It contains twenty one of Lange's photographs together with a brief sketch by her son detailing the scenes they witnessed.

A book, Dorothea Lange's Ireland was published in 1996. It contains 106 photographs that she took in Ireland as well as articles by academic, Gerry Mullins and her son, Daniel Dixon. Lange's trip to Ireland was also the subject of a film. In Dierdre Lynch's Photos to Send, Lynch travels to Ireland and interviews the surviving subjects of Lange's photographs.

Read more about Lange's time in Ireland on the Clare County Library Blog.

AFIS Conference 2014 in Irish National Concert Hall

The 2014 annual conference for the Association of Franco-Irish Studies (AFIS) took place at the National Concert Hall, Dublin on the 23rd and 24th of May. Appropriately, given the venue, the conference theme was "France and Ireland: Celebrating Music, Words and Art".

The conference was opened by the new French Ambassador to Ireland, Mr Jean-Pierre Thébault. Speakers came from universities all over Europe and North America (including Ireland, France, Germany, Macedonia, UK, USA and Canada). Conference programme available here: http://arrow.dit.ie/afis/programme.pdf

Keynote speeches were delivered by the Irish Times Paris correspondent, Lara Marlowe and the Irish poet and author, Mary O'Donnell.

On Friday 23rd May, Lara Marlowe discussed France's place in the European Union from being firm advocates at the beginning of the project in the 1950s to the present state of the relationship. On Saturday 24th May, Mary O'Donnell was interviewed about her books of fiction and poetry by Sean Rocks of RTE's Arena arts programme. I had heard Mary O'Donnell on the radio before. She presented a really good programme on poetry in translation called Crossing the Lines. I'd advise you to listen to it if you have the time.

I delivered a paper on an aspect of my current research. In my paper, I looked at the way in which the French newspaper Libération used photographs to report on the Northern Irish 'Troubles' in the period from the 1970s to the 1990s.

ADEFFI 2014 Postgraduate Symposium

The annual Postgraduate Symposium of the Association des Etudes Françaises et Francophones d'Irlande (ADEFFI) took place in NUI, Galway on Saturday 22 March 2014.

Postgraduate students from universities in Ireland and the UK, who work in the areas of French and Francophone studies, presented papers on various aspects of their research. This is the last symposium that I will organise as Postgraduate Representative of the association. I really enjoyed being part of the committee over the last three years and attending the annual conferences. Thanks to everyone who helped me along the way.

A report on the symposium is up on the association's Facebook page. It includes some photographs of the participants and attendees. Below is a photo of a section of the quadrangle in NUI, Galway.

Book Review - Irish Journal of French Studies

 

I reviewed a book on 'narrative' called Le Récit aujourd'hui for the latest edition of the Irish Journal of French Studies. The journal is an annual international refereed journal published by the Association des Etudes Françaises et Francophones d'Irlande (ADEFFI). Fist issued in 2001 in printed version, the journal is now published online and can be accessed here: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/irjofs/ijfs

More information about the journal here and a list of back issues here.