SIUC Department of English

sample manuscript ledger page Leaf from medieval manuscript Handwritten document

The resources available for the study of Irish literature, culture, and Irish immigration throughout the years via SIU's Morris Library are extensive and diverse. These materials encompass both general, circulating, collections and specialized collections of rare documents and original correspondence and manuscripts from some of the greatest Irish authors and scholars. Please scroll down or select a link below to view descriptions of the holdings.

General Collections

John V. Kelleher Library

Special Collections (General)

Letters, Manuscripts, and Signature Collections

General Collection in Irish Literature

The Humanities Division and Special Collections at the Morris Library of Southern Illinois University at Carbondale have worked together to develop our holdings in Irish literature. While Special Collections has more manuscripts and scarce editions than the general collection, the stacks have a broad selection of secondary material, especially on the early twentieth century. Our holdings include nearly 1,000 secondary works on James Joyce alone, as well as nearly 500 separate books by him. Forty editions by Mary Lavin are on the shelves and over 400 by W. B. Yeats. Other Irish authors are well represented by the library's general collection, including Samuel Beckett, George Russell, Lady Augusta Gregory, Lennox Robinson, Lord Dunsany, Liam O'Flaherty, George Moore, Brian O'Nolan, William Trevor, Padraic Colum, Sean O'Casey, and Austin Clarke.

In addition to these specialized areas, the basic holdings in Irish literature are representative of a fine research library. There are over 100 books of travel and descriptive writing about Ireland as well as over 2,000 works on Irish history, society, and politics. Over 200 books discussing the economic and historical conditions of Northern Ireland alone are included in the collection. Morris Library also subscribes to a number of Irish and Irish-American journals including Irish Historical Studies and Eire-Ireland as well as less well known publications such as The Honest Ulsterman.

The John V. Kelleher Irish Studies Library

Professor John V. Kelleher, emeritus holder of the endowed Chair in Irish Studies at Harvard University, donated the heart of his working library in Irish history, literature, and the social sciences to Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. The volumes in this collection, many of them heavily annotated by Professor Kelleher, constitute a uniquely valuable resource for students and scholars.

Professor Kelleher held Harvard's Chair in Irish Studies until his retirement in 1986. He was a renowned teacher for forty years at Harvard, and his lectures, seminars, and conference papers encouraged hundreds of students toward the study of Irish history and literature. As a publishing scholar, Professor Kelleher's great achievement has been his extraordinary essays, which have always a gem-like precision of thought and an exceptional conciseness of expression, leavened with wit, humor, and colloquial directness. Over the years, these essays have been the catalyst and inspiration for the work in Irish Studies of numerous younger scholars. Moreover, the most remarkable feature of his scholarship has been Professor Kelleher's magisterial command of the entire range of Irish cultural studies in both Irish and English. He has written seminal essays on the earliest corpus of annals, genealogies, and heroic tales, on ideas of "Celticism" in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, on the Irish Renaissance accomplishments of William Butler Yeats and James Joyce, and on the stories of his friends O'Connor and O'Faolain. Moreover, he wrote early, crucial essays that defined terms and set boundaries for the study of the immigrant and ethnic cultures of Irish America. A collection of Professor Kelleher's original poems and translations from the Irish, Too Small for Stovewood, Too Big for Kindling, was published by Ireland's Dolmen Press.

The Kelleher Library will allow new generations of scholars to follow to the roots, and then to build upon, the work of this founding father of Irish Studies in America.

Special Collections: Books and Journals

In the 1960s, Morris Library started collecting books and manuscripts from the period of the Irish Renaissance through roughly 1950. During this time the major collections were purchased. The strengths of the library holdings are in James Joyce, William Butler Yeats, and the Abbey Theatre, although many other Irish artists are well represented. As a rule, strong manuscript holdings of authors (for example, Mary Lavin, Brian O'Nolan, Francis Stuart, Katharine Tynan Hinkson) are backed by nearly definitive collections of their printed works. Since the 1960s, Special Collections has consistently added to its holdings, while the general library has kept pace with both Irish history and literature.

Special Collections holds a definitive collection of primary Joyce works, attempting to collect every printing of every edition of his works, including the piracies, most minor editions, most translations, and the Garland facsimiles. The Arion press edition of Ulysses, which has come to epitomize the textual problems among Joycean scholars and editors, is present, as well as eight copies of the first printing of Ulysses in its various states. The library has a high percentage of all secondary Joyce material as well, and it also houses one of only two bronze casts of the head and shoulders of Joyce from the Milton Hebald statue on his grave in Zurich. We also have original portraits of Joyce, including one by his biographer Frank Budgen.

Special Collections has very strong holdings of first editions of writers connected with the Abbey Theatre and the Irish Literary Renaissance, including Lady Augusta Gregory, John M. Synge, Douglas Hyde, Padraic Colum, Padraic Pearse, Lord Dunsany, Sean O'Casey, and Lennox Robinson, among others. These collections consist mainly of works printed during the authors' lifetimes. The library also contains virtually every edition of the works of Mary Lavin, Francis Stuart, Brendan Behan, and Flann O'Brien.

In addition to a solid representation of the contemporary Irish writers, Special Collections has the Field Day Anthology and all of the Field Day pamphlets. Also present are a number of Irish reference books, an Irish dictionary, and some Gaelic books. A large number of Irish journals have been collected over the years as well. Notable here is a full run of The Bell (1940-1954), founded by Sean O'Faolain and the longest lived, most significant literary magazine of modern Ireland.

Letters, Manuscripts, and Other Special Collections

Materials held in Special Collections at the Morris Library may be viewed during the regular hours for the Special Collections reading room. The links below provide information relevant to the Irish and Irish Immigration materials collected at SIU, but additional details about specific collections can be found by contacting the library directly or referencing the Special Collections portal.

Please select from the links below to view detailed descriptions of individual collections.

The Abbey Theatre 1904-1970

Selected Papers of Alan M. Cohn

Elizabeth Coxhead Collection

The Cuala Press

Envoy 1949-1951

Lady Augusta Gregory