A friendship between a Harvard scholar and Cork writer Frank O'Connor has resulted in one of the most significant literary archive donations in the history of the State.
University College Cork was presented with a collection of private letters between retired Professor of Irish Studies at Harvard University, John V. Kelleher, and Frank O'Connor, at a ceremony in the Boole Library yesterday.
Prof John V. Kelleher met O'Connor while touring Ireland in 1946. Their friendship continued up to the early 1950s with both men corresponding extensively on their shared passion for literature.
Kelleher was also instrumental in securing an Irish literature teaching post for O'Connor at Harvard University.
O'Connor refused a place on the course to then aspiring poet, Sylvia Plath.
Other correspondence from the donation relates to letters written between Cork writer Sean O'Faolain and his editor at Atlantic Monthly Press, Peter Davison. The letters cover O'Faolain's development as a writer until his death in 1991.
The archives also chart the tortured relationship both writers held with Ireland and specifically with the Irish literary world, which at the time was experiencing the machinations of the Irish Censorship Board.
Peter Davison, one of the archive donors and O'Faolain's US-based literary editor, visited UCC yesterday to attend the handover ceremony.
Mr John Fitzgerald, the university librarian, said the deposit of the letters in the Boole Library was of major importance for literary scholarship in Ireland. "We owe a great debt to Mr Davison and Prof Kelleher for their generosity in gifting these letters to UCC."
The Boole Library houses one of the most extensive re search archives in Ireland, which include the Murphy Brewery Ireland archive and the Bantry House archive.