New Exhibition Focuses on The Irish Literary Revival

A new exhibition at The Grolier Club looks at the Irish Literary Revival of the late 19th and early 20th centuries alongside the Irish nationhood using rare books, manuscripts, letters, theatre pamphlets, political propaganda, and photographs.

Risings: The Irish Literary Revival and the Making of a Nation, which is a collaboration with The New York Public Library, will run April 29 through July 25. Curated by Alexander Neubauer and Alan Klein from their collections, Risings will feature around 150 objects, and more than 30 drawn from the NYPL.

“By the turn of the 20th century, the people of Ireland had already endured centuries of struggle for political independence and national identity,” said Neubauer and Klein. “Yet while outright freedom from Britain seemed impossible to achieve, a cultural movement known as the Irish Literary Revival came to serve as a crucial impetus for Ireland’s reemergent sense of self, while establishing this small country as a world-wide literary force.”
 
The exhibition is arranged in in nine chronological sections and highlights of items on show include:

• a copy of W.B. Yeats’s book of verse The Wanderings of Oisin (1889) inspired by ancient Irish myths and inscribed to his muse, the independence activist Maud Gonne, plus Yeats’s handwritten manuscript of his poem The Lake Isle of Innisfree (1890) based on a flash of memory from his childhood in Sligo
• an inscribed first edition of J.M. Synge’s play The Playboy of the Western World (1907), which caused a riot at its premiere at the Abbey Theatre for its depiction of Irish rural life
• a 1904 Dun Emer Press copy of The Stories of Red Hanrahan by Yeats, signed by him with a rarely-seen astrological signature, indicating his interest in the occult
• a 1915 photograph of Irish suffragist and militant activist Countess Constance Markievicz wearing an Irish Citizen Army uniform with a handgun in her holster
• a first edition of Sean O’Casey’s play The Plough and the Stars, a Tragedy in Four Acts (1926), inscribed to painter Augustus John
• the poetry book April and May (1902) by Thomas MacDonagh, inscribed with signatures from 24 Irish prisoners who participated in the Easter Rising

The 1916 Easter Rising section details the rebellion that began on Easter Monday when 1,200 Irish Volunteers began to capture key buildings in Dublin and southern Ireland. Padraig Pearse, commandant-in-chief of the rebel forces, read a hastily printed Proclamation of the Irish Republic, copies of which were then posted in central Dublin and handed out to the crowd.

On show will be a rare, one-year anniversary poster of the Proclamation, Poblacht na hEireann / The Provisional Government of the Irish Republic to the People of Ireland (1917), printed with the same type as the original Proclamation read aloud by Pearse. Never before displayed, this copy was recently uncovered in the Berg Collection of The New York Public Library in a box described as 'Irish Pamphlets: Easter Rebellion' This exceedingly rare 1917 printing, initiated by the women’s nationalist movement Cumann na mBan to mark the first anniversary of the Easter Rising, was posted across Dublin using jam pots of glue, but most copies were quickly torn down by the police.