Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Even though St. Patrick’s Day is over, students can continue to celebrate Irish heritage — with an academic flavor.
The University has one of the world’s largest collections of Irish literature in the special collections department at Spencer Research Library.
The collection includes more than 250,000 books, including a large number of William Butler Yeats works and more than 900 books and articles by James Joyce.
The Joyce collection features first editions of all but five of his works. It also has the first edition and the first issue of Joyce’s famous novel “Ulysses” signed by Joyce himself.
The Yeats collection features first editions of all except one of his works, “Mosada,” which is extremely scarce.
Rebecca Smith, public relations director for KU Libraries, said that the collection was so large because of many gifts and collections have been added.
Yeats and Joyce were the two most well-known authors featured, but the collection contains several lesser-known authors, which Smith said were still “incredibly important to those who study Irish literature.”
The special collections department was started in 1953 to obtain other collections. The James Joyce collection was one of the first acquired.
One of the largest collections the department acquired was in 1959, and was accompanied by a note from Watson Library that said “11 tons of books.” The collection came from a book collector named P.S. O’Hegarty. He was also a historian and author who lived during the 19th and early 20th century.
O’Hegarty’s collection contained Yeats’ books, poems, historical pamphlets and journals.
The collection even features a signed copy of the Irish declaration of independence.
The Spencer Research Library is at 1450 Poplar Lane, behind Strong Hall.
—Edited by Nick Mangiaracina
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