Irish Literature in the Aftermath of Independence: 1922–1939

W. B. Yeats became the first Irish citizen to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923. His marriage to Georgie Hyde-Lees and his work with Ezra Pound, together with the dislocations of World War I and the turmoil of the political struggle in Ireland, coincided with a leaner, more direct style of poetry that led to some of his best, most important work. Those years at the Abbey Theatre also saw the production of Sean O’Casey’s trilogy of urban tenement plays: The Shadow of a Gunman, Juno and the Paycock, and the controversial The Plough and the Stars. They brought current events to the stage and their popularity saved the theater. In 1925, the Abbey Theatre became the first state-subsidized theater in the English-speaking world when it began to receive an annual subsidy from the Irish government. Yeats’s and O’Casey’s voices carried across the ocean to the United States and to the Continent, giving international standing to their work. James Joyce’s reputation reached new heights with the publication of Ulysses in 1922, and within a short time he became an international sensation. Their work and that of other poets and writers like Liam O’Flaherty drew global attention to Irish literature in the first third of the twentieth century. At the same time, the Catholic Church’s control over social norms and institutions created a challenging atmosphere for most artists in Ireland.

James Joyce. Ulysses. Paris: Shakespeare and Co., 1922.

One of 750 copies of the first trade edition.

Ulysses is considered among the greatest novels of the twentieth century, a modernist cornerstone. Written in cities across Europe between 1914 and 1920, Ulysses takes place on a single day in Dublin in 1904, the day Joyce met Nora Barnacle. Key figures from the Irish Literary Revival appear in the novel, either directly by name (George Russell and W. B. Yeats) or by reference (Lady Gregory and J. M. Synge). Although Joyce left Ireland in 1904, seldom to return, Ulysses is as inextricably linked with the city and country of its author’s birth as any work in modern literature.

C[amille]. Rup, Zurich. James Joyce.

Sepia-toned gelatin silver print.  Inscribed: “To Arthur Symons / James Joyce / Paris, 29.5.925.”

It was Arthur Symons, friend of W. B. Yeats and noted critic, who encouraged Elkin Mathews to publish Joyce’s first book, Chamber Music. Joyce presented this photograph to Symons alongside a press copy of Ulysses, partly in gratitude and partly, no doubt, to encourage Symons’s critical support of his novel.

W. B. Yeats. The Bounty of Sweden: A Meditation, and a Lecture Delivered before the Royal Swedish Academy and Certain Notes. Dublin: The Cuala Press, 1925.

Inscribed: “Lady Gregory’s copy / W. B. Yeats.”

Yeats used his 1923 Nobel speech, printed here by the Cuala Press, not to talk of his poetry or the recently concluded violence in Ireland but mainly to speak of the work of the Irish dramatic movement; especially notable was his statement that Lady Gregory and J. M. Synge should have been with him on the stage.

Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations.

Ernest Boyd. Ireland’s Literary Renaissance. New York: Knopf, 1922.

Inscribed by James Joyce to his brother Stanislaus Joyce.

Ernest Boyd made one of the most thorough studies of the Irish Literary Revival. Borrowing books from John Quinn’s library in New York City, he championed most of the important literary figures in Ireland, but in the first edition of 1917 he omitted James Joyce. In this revised edition of 1922, Boyd included eight pages on Joyce and the impact of Ulysses. Ever sensitive, Joyce must have felt redeemed, because he presents this book to his brother and confidant, signing it as he did to his family alone: “To Stannie / Jim / Paris / 6 September, 1923.”

Abbey Theatre, Dublin. Programme for a performance of Juno and the Paycock: A Tragedy in Three Acts by Sean O’Casey. April 9, 1934.

Signed by the Abbey Theatre cast, including Eileen Crowe as Juno and Barry Fitzgerald as “Captain” Boyle.

Unlike so many plays about rural life, Sean O’Casey’s famous first plays at the Abbey Theatre showcased the working-class world of Dublin’s tenements. Choosing recent history as his setting, his first trio of plays, though often criticized for the moral ambiguity of their characters, were instant successes. After O’Casey left Ireland upon the rejection of his fourth play, his work remained in repertory and secured the financial survival of the Abbey Theatre.

Sean O’Casey. The Plough and the Stars, a Tragedy in Four Acts. London: Macmillan & Co. Ltd., 1926.

Inscribed: “To Augustus John from Sean O’Casey with Warm Regards, 27/6/28.” Additionally inscribed by O’Casey, pointing to his portrait: “The Lord has afflicteth my soul with many sorrows & this is one of them.”

The Plough and the Stars was greeted with riots by many Republicans angered by the lack of revolutionary heroes in the play and the shades of gray depicting ordinary Dubliners during the Easter Rebellion. As he did for Synge, Yeats defended it from the stage, saying “You have disgraced yourselves again. Is this to be an ever-recurring celebration of the arrival of Irish genius?” O’Casey, stung by how nationalist fervor drowned out the cause of labor in 1916 and upon the rejection of his fourth play for the Abbey Theatre, permanently left Ireland. The Plough and the Stars was banned by the Church during the fiftieth anniversary of the Rising in 1966, but it has now become a touchstone for the Abbey Theatre and Irish drama.

Liam Flaherty. “The Fairy Goose,” “The Mountain Tavern,” “The Sinner,” “Trapped.” 1926-29.

Autograph manuscript drafts.

Liam O’Flaherty was raised in a family that spoke both English and Irish. While he was a lifelong socialist, five of whose novels were banned by the Irish State, he found critical success with The Informer (1925), which was made into a film by John Ford. Three of these early short stories appeared in his collection The Mountain Tavern (1928).

W. B. Yeats. The Tower. London: Macmillan & Co., 1928.

One of the foremost books of poetry in the twentieth century, The Tower, described by Yeats as “...the best book I have written,” was received rapturously by critics. Within a few months of its February 1928 release, it was already in a second printing. Yeats and his family were driven from his actual tower in Ballylee in 1922 by the Irish Civil War. This collection commences with “Sailing to Byzantium,” with its opening, “That is no country for old men.” Few Nobel Prize winners have created such acclaimed work in the years following receipt of that award.

Vintage photograph and photograph of a drawing by Robert Gregory. Thoor Ballylee.

W. B. Yeats’s copies, with “Mrs. George Yeats” annotation on rear and Cuala Industry stamp on the reverse of the drawing.

W. B. Yeats bought and began renovating the Norman tower, Thoor Ballylee, in 1917 with his wife, George.  It became for him a physical and spiritual locus for his poetry, including his eponymous collection, The Tower (1928) as well as The Winding Stair (1929). This photo, originally belonging to the Yeats family, was among several used for Althea Gyles’s cover design of Yeats’s 1928 volume, The Tower.

W. B. Yeats. The Winding Stair. New York: The Fountain Press, 1929.

Inscribed: “Olivia Shakespear from W. B. Yeats, Nov 1929.”

Yeats’s The Winding Stair was initially published in the United States and opens with an elegy to the sisters Eva Gore-Booth and Constance Markewicz, both of whom had died in the mid-1920s. Their passing was marked by Yeats as both important to him personally—he had  met them over three decades earlier when they were in their twenties—and important in marking a historical passage, as they were part of the generation that had stirred Ireland both culturally and politically, but had begun to pass on. This copy is inscribed by Yeats to Olivia Shakespear, whom he had first met thirty-five years earlier in 1894. They had been lovers and they remained close until the end of Yeats’s life. Yeats met both his wife, George, and Ezra Pound through Shakespear.

21st Anniversary Performance, The Abbey Theatre. Program. Dundrum: Cuala Press, 1925.

Signed by W. B. Yeats, Lady Gregory, Sean O’Casey, Lennox Robinson, Douglas Hyde (in Gaelic), as well as by Abbey Theatre actors Barry Fitzgerald, Frank Fay, May Craig, Udophus Wright, and many others.

This ten-page program lists the performances by Yeats, Gregory, and Synge for that evening, plus a short history of the Abbey Theatre and lists all the plays ever produced by the National Theatre Society, in alphabetical order.  This copy was inscribed by most of the important writers of the Irish Literary Revival.

Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations.

AE [George Russell]. Verses for Friends. Dublin: Printed for the writer.

Inscribed: “Patrick Kavanagh / from AE Dec. 32.” Further inscribed: “Patrick Kavanagh / September / 1952 / 52 Pembroke Rd.”

In 1929, Russell launched Patrick Kavanagh as a writer, accepting three of his poems for publication in his weekly, The Irish Statesman. “A.E. opened the door to me,” he wrote.  This volume was inscribed for Kavanagh by AE and twenty years later by Kavanagh himself from Pembroke Road, a street, like Raglan Road, that has been immortalized in his verse.

R. M. Fox. Rebel Irishwomen. Dublin and Cork: The Talbot Press Limited, 1935.

This volume is signed by Maud Gonne, Helen Molony, and Maeve Cavanagh MacDowell, each of whom are profiled in the book. Also profiled are Eva Gore-Booth and Constance Mackievicz, among others. The author states that “It is well recognized that women played an active and influential role in the struggle for Irish independence.” The book was issued on the eve of the nineteenth anniversary of the Easter Rising.

W. B. Yeats. Dramatis Personae 1896-1902. London: Macmillan & Co. Ltd., 1936.

Inscribed: “Lennox [Robinson] from W.B.Y./ September 1936.”

Dramatis Personae is Yeats’s memoir of the origins of the Irish Literary Revival as well as the founding of the Irish Literary Theatre and its evolution into the Abbey Theatre. He places himself and Lady Gregory at the center of it all, settles some old scores, and creates the received history that has come down to this day. The inscription to Lennox Robinson, poet and playwright, is rife with meaning, as Robinson, Yeats’s protégé, had been manager of the Abbey Theatre and ultimately became a longstanding director  of it. He edited Lady Gregory’s diaries for publication after her death and wrote a history of the Abbey Theatre as well.

Patrick Kavanagh. “Seven Birds.”

Autograph manuscript draft.

This poem was eventually printed as “Four Birds” in Kavanagh’s inaugural book of verse, The Ploughman and Other Poems, 1936, which established him as a genuine voice of rural life in Ireland.  Seamus Heaney would cite Kavanagh as an early and masterful influence.

Autograph farewell letter from Lady Gregory to W. B. Yeats. Coole Park: , February 18, 1932.

In her final letter to Yeats, written shakily in pencil in February 1932, Lady Gregory offers a crafted and moving expression of farewell: “I do think I have been of use to the country— & for that in great part I thank you. I thank you also for these last months you have spent with me—your presence has made them pass quickly and happily in spite of bodily pain, as your friendship has made my last years—from first to last fruitful in work, in service. All blessings to you in the years to come.”

Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations.

Autograph letter from Samuel Beckett to Deryk Mendel, 1958.

When Dublin Archbishop John Charles McQuaid banned productions of Sean O’Casey’s and James Joyce’s work at a Dublin theater festival, it prompted Beckett to withdraw his own plays and O’Casey to prohibit productions of his work in Ireland during his lifetime. The hegemony of the Catholic Church in the years after independence created, according to novelist John McGahern, “a climate of suppression and poverty and fear.”