The handover last weekend of a collection of private letters between Cork writers Sean O'Faolain and Frank O'Connor and their literary mentors in the US was a coup for UCC's Boole Library. For the first time, a significant archive on the writers' lives will be available to scholars in Ireland.
The archive includes correspondence between Prof John V. Kelleher, now retired professor of Irish studies at Harvard, and O'Connor, as well as between O'Faolain and Mr Peter Davison, his editor at Atlantic Monthly Press.
Prof Kelleher was responsible for bringing O'Connor to Harvard where he taught a course on Irish literature and famously refused a place on it to Sylvia Plath.
The correspondence reveals the selfdoubts and sometimes tortuous progression of the writers, reaching back to the 1940s in O'Connor's case and from the 1960s to his death in 1991 in the case of O'Faolain. The Kelleher element of the archive has been used by scholars already, most notably by James Matthews in his biography of O'Connor, Voices.
However, the O'Faolain segment is new. He began corresponding with Mr Davison, an acclaimed poet and also poetry editor of the Atlantic in 1963, when the editor/writer partnership began, and continued to explore that relationship until his death.
The letters penned by both writers contain insights into contemporary Irish writing and the political milieu in which they were writing. They also lay bare two strong characters full of humour.
UCC archivist Ms Carol Quinn, who will sort the letters and catalogue them, believes this is one of the most significant literary archive donations in the history of the State. She says it is the only collection of its kind relating to O'Connor and O'Faolain outside of the National Library.
Mr Davison went to UCC at the weekend for the presentation of the archive. It will be of major importance to literary scholarship in Ireland, according to UCC librarian Mr John FitzGerald.
The occasion was not without irony. In 1931, O'Faolain applied for the post of professor of English at UCC but was turned down.
The post went instead to Daniel Corkery who had once been a guiding light for O'Faolain and O'Connor, both of whom later fell out with him. The pair were often referred to by Cork wits as "Corkery's gluggers", a glugger being an egg that won't hatch.
The term may have contained more truth than was realised because O'Connor and O'Faolain were rarely at home in Ireland and felt they had to look elsewhere, particularly to Britain and the US for acceptance. Censorship was another factor which may explain why Irish repositories are not overburdened with their papers. The UCC donation has corrected an imbalance.