Irish and Irish Immigration Studies

W. J. McCormack Collection of Francis Stuart Papers 1949-1974

This collection contains correspondence, typescripts, and other material, mainly relating to A Festschrift for Francis Stuart on His Seventieth Birthday, 28th April 1972, edited by McCormack and published by Dolmen Press in 1972. The correspondence includes twenty-two original letters from Stuart, nearly all to McCormack, as well as several letters to McCormack from others. In addition, there are several typescripts of short works by Stuart, galley proofs and unsewn gatherings of the festschrift, a typescript of John Jordan's "Things to Live For," which is part of the festschrift, and miscellaneous ephemera relating to a lecture and play by Stuart.

Stuart's letters to McCormack, covering the years 1969-1974, discuss several of his novels, his ideas on violence and prison and their effects on writers, and on being neglected by the public. Stuart also discusses his Saville Hicks Memorial Lecture "The Meaning of Freedom," Who Fears to Speak (his play about Terence Mac Swiney), an interview with Frank Kermode, and the poems of McCormack, John Berryman, and John Jordan. The collection contains two drafts of "The Meaning of Freedom," one signed, with revisions and corrections by Stuart, the other a later version with an introduction, a few corrections, and a letter to the Reverend Kenneth Wright. An unsigned typescript of Stuart's short story "The Stormy Petrel," with minor corrections apparently made by the author, is also included in the collection. Although the dates of the collection are 1949-1974, the only item composed prior to 1969 is a short letter from Stuart to the President of the Irish Academy of Letters dated 24 September 1949.