Interconnections between Art and Commerce: Literary Prizes, Readers, and the Reading Committee of the Irish Women Writers' Club (1933–1958)

ABSTRACT

This essay examines the interconnections between art and commerce that lie behind cultural production. Using the case study of the Irish Women Writers’ Club (1933–1958), it explores the political, cultural, and social realms in which alliances are formed and supported, and the intersections between culture and the business of books, art, and politics, reading committees and readers. It extends on recent scholarship which positions women writers firmly at the centre of Irish literary life in the mid-twentieth century, offering new unpublished accounts of the club, their public activities and reading practices, and the machinations behind the reading committee that awarded the literary prize, the Book of the Year, from the period 1936–1939. As progressives, they leveraged their connections, national and international, to maintain a space for female intellectual thought while keeping alive the tradition of women's writing for future generations.

KEYWORDS:

• Art
• commerce
• women writers
• reading committees
• literary prizes
• intellectual
• feminist

This essay examines the interconnections between art and commerce that lie behind cultural production. Using the case study of the Irish Women Writers’ Club (1933–1958), it explores the political, cultural, and social realms in which alliances are formed and supported, and the intersections between culture and the business of books, art, and politics, reading committees and readers. It extends on recent scholarship which positions women writers firmly at the centre of Irish literary life in the mid-twentieth century, offering new unpublished accounts of the club, their public activities and reading practices, and the machinations behind the reading committee that awarded the literary prize, the Book of the Year.¹ Members of the club engaged in public reading forums, sharing works-in-progress, offering advice, and providing collegial support. Meetings and public readings were held in restaurants, hotels, clubs, cafes, and public spaces in Dublin’s city centre, operating as landmarks of feminist agency and forums for intellectual exchange and commercial possibilities. They hosted annual banquets, and literary prizes, held “at homes” to discuss literature, and reviewed each other’s works in periodicals and newspapers, making visible the presence of the professional woman writer in the literary realm.

Membership of the club consisted of a set of influential women linked by class, age, education, and political affiliations or connected through their feminist networks, artistic circles, family connections or literary endeavours. Familiar names in Dublin’s artistic and political circles were prominent members including novelists Kate O'Brien, Maura Laverty, and Elizabeth Bowen, children's writer Patricia Lynch, playwrights Christine Longford and Teresa Deevy, poets Temple Lane and Winifred Letts, and political writers Dorothy Macardle, and Rosamond Jacob, among others. Influential political and academic women included Hanna Sheehy Skeffington, Maud Gonne MacBride and Mary Hayden, who brought to the network a vast array of contacts in national, academic, and international feminist movements. They wrote in multiple forms, and effortlessly embraced the merger of ideals from highbrow avant-garde art with popular culture, circulating their works through a wide diversity of mediums. The genesis of these networks derived from affiliations, personal and professional, originating in radical movements of the early twentieth century and revitalised in the cultural sphere. They were a close-knit community of women writers ideologically united in their aim to shape a female literary tradition and maintain a space for women’s literature in the cultural marketplace.² The ability to move beyond individual aims, beliefs, and identities to achieve their shared goals was a key strength. By broadening the parameters for membership, they opened entry to non-Irish writers, women of letters, radio presenters, and journalists widening the scope for innovative ideas, inclusivity, and new influences within the club.

To begin with, this paper examines the contexts in which these networks were formed, exchanged, and friendships initiated. These existed within a myriad of socio-cultural moments and experimental spaces where innovations in art, politics and publishing thrived in the early years of the Irish Free State and were performed through the repertory theatres and “little magazines” of the period. In the political realm, the influence of international feminist movements as networks for disseminating texts is identified, underscoring the importance of affiliations and ties in the dissemination and reception of texts. Furthermore, the range of marketing strategies used by the club are examined to reveal the commercial ambitions of this collective as they forged a space for women writers in the cultural marketplace.

Beginnings

The Women Writers’ Club had its roots in the avant-garde movement of the 1920s operating in the cafes, restaurants, arts clubs, “little magazines”, and repertory theatres which burgeoned in Dublin’s city centre. Writing in Motley, the journal of the Gate Theatre, playwright Christine Longford, Countess of Longford, recounted her experiences of this period. Motley served as an intermediary for intellectual thought and was an autonomous literary journal which portrayed and popularised the Gate as an outward-looking European, and progressive theatre.³ It functioned as a social document, strategically influencing its elite circle of readers through its positive performance reviews, promotion of events, book reviews, and intellectual and political commentaries. Edited by the talented Mary Manning, the magazine was aimed at a specific “highbrow” reader offering insights into current opinions on the arts.⁴ Examples include contributions from the cubist artist Mainie Jellett, trade unionist Louise Bennett, playwright Christine Longford and the poet Irene Haugh; Blanaid Salkeld’s collection of poetry, Hello Eternity, which won the Book of the Year award in 1933, received a positive review.⁵ While the publication was short-lived (Motley ceased publication in 1934), it offered an important platform for women writers and acted as a seedbed for future collaborations and alliances, particularly amongst artistic women involved in the Women Writers Club.

The 1920s was a period of experimental flux in which performance cultures flourished, financed by a “highbrow” patronage who were willing and eager to sanction and support “amateurish” productions, “because it was Art, and they were doing their best”.⁶ Manifestos were issued, “little magazines” were published, debates about “cultural values” were exchanged and supported by “high-brow” tastes and “generous patrons [who] wrote their cheques for the privilege of seeing a weekly programme of plays by Strindberg, Ibsen, Tchevoc [sic], Shaw, Pirandello, Martinez, Sierra, Dunsany and others”.⁷ In the long run, however, lack of production expertise and inadequate finances, (“the money was never quite enough,”) overshadowed such noble efforts, as Longford notes:

Their dresses were bad. How often he saw the same pseudo-peasant costume and the same red boots used as Russian, Spanish and Scandinavian; how often the Strindbergian, Ibsenian or Tchehovian [sic] hero wore the same broad-brimmed hat, obviously false beard, bicycle-cape and goloshes.⁸

Artistic productions depended on the extent of patronage and the willingness of the patron to invest in costly ventures. The patronage system offered many attractions for artists and writers, freeing them from financial constraints and crass commercialism, yet intellectual compromises were expected by a high-brow elite, which ran counter to the requirements of a functioning theatre. Production challenges existed as there were “not enough actors” nor were there sufficient “time to learn their lines” to meet the demand for the continuous production of weekly plays to offer their select audience.⁹ Longford explains that the “high-brows in the audience” lacked adequate knowledge of the complexity of theatre except what they learned from “books and magazines, as if from another world”, adding to the difficulties of experimental theatre. ¹⁰ Hilton Edwards and Micheál Mac Liammóir were instrumental in establishing a more financially sustainable model when they founded the Gate Theatre in 1928. Thereafter, Longford and her husband Edward Packenham (Lord Longford) became patrons of the Gate Theatre; copper-fastening their business relationship with a performance of one of Longford’s first plays, Queens and Emperors, a “light comedy about the lounging ladies and gentlemen of Roman officialdom”.¹¹ This arrangement opened up new opportunities for Longford to display her playwriting talents. Her one-act play The New Girl was performed alongside the works of established playwrights including Eugene O’Neill, George Bernard Shaw, and Richard Rowley, thus situating her within an international milieu of well-respected writers. She continued to write prolifically receiving recognition from the Women Writers’ Club, in the form of a second-prize award for her novel Printed Cotton (1935). A report, written for the national newspaper The Irish Press, deemed it one of the “fine books to its credit this year”.¹² Longford’s literary circle included Sybil le Brocquy (Helen Staunton), Mainie Jellett, Shelah Richards, Maura Laverty, Dorothy Macardle, and Blanaid Salkeld (Salkeld's verse play Scarecrow over the Corn was staged by the Dublin Drama League at The Gate Theatre in 1941), a milieu which congregated around theatrical circles in the mid-twentieth century.¹³ They remained prominent members of the Women Writers’ Club throughout its tenure, embracing a liberal and autonomous ethos, free from outside interference. The maintenance of an independent female-centric writing club was core to the values upheld by the Women Writers’ Club and reflected in the literature produced and celebrated through their literary prize, The Book of the Year, outlined later in this paper.¹⁴

In the political realm, alliances established in earlier movements of the twentieth century continued to evolve as supportive networks.¹⁵ Connections with feminist groups and professional networks were cultivated, broadening the scope for marketing books as well as lending support for political causes. In the international feminist arena, relationships between Irish feminist networks and their British counterparts were cordial and they corresponded on many issues.¹⁶ Legitimate links can be identified with the British Six Point Group, the Open-Door Council, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, the League of Nations, the Women’s Freedom League and the newspaper Tide and Time, an important outlet for Irish women’s writing.¹⁷ They co-operated on campaigns of shared interest including the “Mass Meeting for the Right of the Married Woman to Earn” an issue which concerned women in the professions in Ireland and Britain. Correspondences in the private papers of Hanna Sheehy Skeffington confirm the vast networks involved in this campaign, listing twenty-seven supportive organisations and highlighting the importance of writers to the campaign: “Many of the papers here have commissioned writers like Winifred Holtby, Mrs Haldane, Rebecca W etc., to do paragraphs and articles on this subject. [sic] is one way of getting publicity for the meeting.”¹⁸ This support was reciprocated in Ireland during the campaign against the Draft Constitution in 1937, in what was deemed by many feminists as an attempt to diminish women’s status as full citizens. British feminist groups swiftly and publicly vocalised their support for their Irish counterparts sending telegrams and letters to the Irish government. ¹⁹

Sheehy Skeffington, then Ireland’s foremost feminist and a prominent member of the Women Writers’ Club, struck up close friendships with feminists connected to the Minerva Club, based in 28 Brunswick Square, Bloomsbury, the headquarters of the Women’s Freedom League where she frequently stayed when she visited London in the 1930s. The Minerva Club served as a feminist landmark of cultural and political exchange and a social space where literary and political women could organise and host activists.²⁰ Sheehy Skeffington was held in high regard by her British feminist counterparts and their literary milieu, who commended her efforts to bridge the divide between national politics and universal women’s issues. Following her death in 1946, Marian Reeves acknowledged Sheehy Skeffington’s contribution to the women’s movement, writing in The Women’s Bulletin, the periodical of The Women’s Freedom League (W.F.L):

Until the war, Mrs Skeffington was a frequent visitor to London, where her ready wit, her great ability as a speaker, and her warm personal affection for her English friends – however divergent their political outlook – made her popular and welcome in any gathering … For many years she has kept us in touch with the Women’s movement in Ireland.²¹

Friendships, affiliations, and shared feminist goals helped diffuse any possible issues which conflicting political issues may have raised, focusing instead on shared ideologies about feminism and equal rights in the interwar years. The reciprocity of communications between political women and professional writers helped garner support for their causes while keeping abreast of developing feminist campaigns.²² This convivial arrangement was aided by the close life-long friendships between Sheehy Skeffington and the suffragette and activist Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence and her husband Frederick, and Charlotte Despard, one of the founding members of the W.F.L.²³

Alliances with feminist grassroot organisations potentially offered a ready-made readership for new books. Alice Staveley notes that the modernist writer Virginia Woolf leveraged her connections within feminist networks to actively promote her anti-war treatise, Three Guineas.²⁴ These networks eagerly promoted her books within their community of readers and buyers to form a central and important filter for transmitting Woolf’s ideas.²⁵ So, too, Sheehy Skeffington promoted Irish women writers at the Minerva Club in the 1930s. In a speech entitled “Irish Women Writers” given in 1937 and recorded in the Women’s Freedom League Bulletin, Sheehy Skeffington drew attention to the distinctiveness of Irish women’s writing likening it to a “brook” with a “liveliness of its own”, and mentioning the writings of Maeve Cavanagh McDowell (a leading member of the Reading Committee), Nora Connolly O’Brien, (winner of the Book of the Year in 1935), and “Dr" Mary Hayden amongst others.²⁶ She used the opportunity to commend Kate O’Brien, co-chair of the meeting, noting that “Miss Kate O’Brien is in the foremost rank and has been called the Irish Galsworthy. She also has the distinction of having had one of her books banned in Ireland”.²⁷ These endorsements were critical to the reconstruction of reputations, damaged by censorship in Ireland and the banning of their books, as in the case of Kate O’Brien, and a means to promote Irish writers in the British book market. The event was so successful that it was “crowded beyond its capacity”, showcasing the interest in Irish women’s writing and the influence of Sheehy Skeffington.

The club was founded during a period of increased literary change, politically, culturally and legislatively, that saw the establishment of formal literary societies including The Irish Academy of Letters (1932) and Irish P.E.N. (1934), many with overlapping membership.²⁸ Notwithstanding, the balance of power relationships remained unequal, driven by an increasingly conservative society, a flailing economy, censorship, and the introduction of restrictive employment legislation which sought to relegate women to the domestic sphere.²⁹ A unified approach challenging social and cultural obstacles was adopted. The club responded by initiating a series of public relations events and activities to target a wide readership for their books. Social events such as the Annual Banquet functioned as networking forums to connect with those in publishing and media. Members wrote reviews in elite periodicals and endorsed each other’s works.³⁰ Literary collaborations lent authority to members’ works, while book prefaces and acknowledgements emphasised important affiliations and influences.³¹ In particular, the awarding of the literary prize, the Book of the Year, gained widespread media attention, simultaneously lending symbolic capital and prestige to the authors and their works. Strategically, they fashioned a set of cultural practices that cultivated the image of the intellectual woman performing the act of reading in public spaces.

Readers and Literary Prizes

If theatre and feminist politics were public forums for the spectacle of art and politics, dining venues provided the public space for the performative act of reading. New unpublished evidence underscores the centrality of city centre landmarks to the image of the club and its members. The acts of reading aloud, sharing ideas, and performing authorship in high-profile venues evidence the intention of the club to construct a visible role for women writers in the public sphere.

In the 1930s, a series of invitations were issued by Blanaid Salkeld, acting as honorary secretary, regarding the club’s monthly meetings. The first of these was to be held at the Redbank Restaurant on D’Olier Street. The topic intended for discussion, “Readings from Contemporary Women Poets” foregrounds the intention of the host to encourage intellectual debate within a congenial environment.³² In April 1934, Salkeld circulated a second letter containing two separate invitations. The first concerned a meeting to be held at her own home:

The next meeting of the above [The Women Writers’ Club] will take place at 8 pm on Wednesday, 2nd May, at the above address [43 Morehampton Rd, Pembroke]. I should be glad to have all acceptances by the previous Monday. (Coffee, tea, etc: can be provided, at 9d. per head).³³

The offer by Salkeld to use her home as a professional space complicates the divide between public and private spheres, yet it contextualises the domestic residence as an optional place of cultural and commercial exchange and as a private space for engagement where business matters could be discussed without the responsibilities or costs of catering. These semi-private spaces operated as forums for collaboration and relationship building at times removed from public scrutiny, or as exclusionary spaces where participation was by invitation only. Meetings were opportunities functioning as literary salons in the way understood by Ana Parejo Vadillo who describes such hybrid spaces as sites of human and economic relations combining “networking with self-promotion, writing with publicity”.³⁴ They also functioned as opportunities for publicity for the club as one report in The Irish Times suggests. Following a discussion about the writer George Sand at the home of Dorothy Day in 1939, one guest commented on the “interesting and animated discussion, in which several members joined” noting the popularity of “at homes” in bringing the writers “together closely in the season.”³⁵ These alternative spaces – homes, restaurants, libraries, and hotels – symbolise a refiguring of the public space for the female intellectual and as a site for commercial possibilities.

The second invitation concerns the monthly dinner to be held at the Redbank Restaurant: “Each member attending this dinner is asked to read an extract from a living Irish writer, and colleagues are to be asked to guess the author”.³⁶ The use of public spaces for the business of books constituted an evolving set of interactions by the Women Writers’ Club to posit readers as central to the dissemination of ideas. Another means of targeting readers directly was performed through the ritual of the Annual Banquet, held annually as a forum for social interaction and as a public relations event for the awarding of the club’s literary prize, the Book of the Year.

The Book of the Year functioned as a means of targeting multiple audiences and lending authority to the winning texts and publicity for the club. Its role in reshaping female literary culture was unprecedented, as the first Irish literary prize to be awarded to woman writers.³⁷ Gisèle Sapiro suggests a literary prize imbues its winners with symbolic rather than purely economic transactional value.³⁸ James English conceptualises it as a “sort of gift … it involves both the awarders and the recipients in a highly ritualized theatre of gestures and counter-gestures which however reciprocal in some of its aspects, can be readily distinguished from the drama of marketplace exchange”.³⁹ English and Sapiro contend that a literary prize is not purely an economic transaction, as the prestige and honour in receiving a prize are bound up in the “gift”. The Book of the Year consisted of a non-monetary prize issued to published authors and awarded at the Annual Banquet. The prize included an edition of the “writers’ book, beautifully and artistically bound” and replete with gold lettering, reminding the reading public that the artefact itself, the book, symbolised literary merit and prestige.⁴⁰

An estimated fifteen books won the “Book of the Year” over twenty-five years. At the annual banquet in 1936, Macardle used the occasion as a business opportunity to toast the winning author, while presenting “women writers with some amusing ideas of how best to further the sale of their books”.⁴¹ At the same event, Mainie Jellett, the modernist painter, “gave a list of books and poems published during the past year by members of the club”.⁴² At other events, the speaker sought to elevate the credentials of the writers: “I am glad to hear another book by Miss Jacob has been accepted for publication, it is about “The United Irishmen” a subject on which she has been writing in periodicals for quite a long time.”, thus positing Jacob as a renowned and well-established writer and historian, while spotlighting new books for sale.⁴³

Readers were a critical part of the conversation and meetings; events and topics were regularly reported on in the press. Newspapers depict the club as an elite group entertaining themselves in glamorous hotels, elegantly dressed and photographed by enthusiastic media narrating witty speeches, anecdotes, after-dinner toasts, and attendance lists (one record listed eighty attendees in 1938).⁴⁴ A deliberate effort was made to enhance the profile of the winning authors, building a brand image of the writer by offering insights into their lifestyle and literary pedigree. One report describes the writer, Nora Connolly O’Brien, as “the eldest daughter of James Connolly the labour leader”.⁴⁵Another notes the “Brilliant writers like the members of this club” while imploring its readers to start a book club:

We could all join them in the revolt against the contradictory prevalent opinions: that women have no brains at all: and that the brains they have should be kept for domestic use only. Nothing could be more easily started than Woman [sic] Readers Clubs. If any number of women, the more the merrier, decide to form such a club, they have only to agree on their books for reading and discussion, and on their meeting place, and there is the Club started.⁴⁶

The notion of a Woman’s Readers Club as a liberating and empowering activity posits reading clubs within a specific feminist space of knowledge exchange. Moreover, the call for the establishment of reading clubs suggests a commercial as well as an ideological intent. Reaching out to a wider female readership could potentially attract higher sales of books while giving agency to women. Although Irish writers had access to international book clubs, including the American Catholic Book Club (Kate O’Briens The Last of Summer, and Maura Laverty’s No More than Human, featured in the subscription lists in 1943 and 1944 respectively),⁴⁷ the aim was progressive for the period and ahead of its time, anticipating the first Irish book club, An Club Leabhar, founded by Tarlach Ó hUid in 1949.⁴⁸ Arguably, the Women Writers’ Club functioned as an informal book club, where members read books and offered opinions, ideas, and advice while at the same time assuming a social function.⁴⁹

The Reading Committee

The political act of reading, reviewing, recommending, interpreting, and choosing winning texts involved a specific set of skills, expertise, and business acumen. Paul Eggert contends that authorial intention is influenced by discursive networks and commercial possibilities:

The literary work, written within a partly pre-defined genre, is being socialised even before it enters the public domain and is subject to the operations of the publisher's editor, copy editor, page – and cover designers and printers. It acquires a shape that can be manufactured and then becomes a commodity that can be sold. In this condition, it is available to influence contemporary discursive networks. To assume that the real story starts here – at the reader-discursive level – is to ignore the personal agencies that have done the “invisible work” that lies behind it.⁵⁰

These discursive networks and “invisible” presences, I argue, exists within the composition of the Reading Committee of the Women Writers’ Club. In what follows, I will explore the contribution of influential women within the Reading Committee, the nomination process, and the choice of winners, offering analysis and interpretation of the books nominated in the late 1930s. While the dearth of material evidence prevents a perspective of the Reading Committee beyond these years, a thematic analysis allows for speculation concerning intent, outlined later in the paper.⁵¹

Recently discovered material reveals new insights into the machinations of the Reading Committee. In May 1936, Salkeld circulated the notification for the “Women Writers’ Club – Agenda”. It featured eight items including the report of the previous general meeting held in November 1935, the number of social meetings held (eight in total), the number of “Committee Meetings” held (six in total), the Treasurer’s Report, and the election of the Chairman and officers. The efforts by the club to confer literary status to its members are foreground in item 8: Submitted by Committee: Mrs Craig Davidson suggests that in the paragraph in constitution re work w. be [sic] awarded the annual banquet, the description “guest interest” be awarded & read “of most literary value”.⁵²

A direct reference to the Reading Committee indicates the form the voting within the club took:

Mrs Piatt proposes that [sic] Annual Election of Committee be announced beforehand. New names invited & voting papers distributed to members. Also, that Committee meet at 7.30 till 8, at Nassau library, & so conclude before the social Meeting. And thirdly, short informal debates on subjects of literary, artistic or social interest will be held at meetings. ⁵³

Voting papers consisted of a list of books (one in 1937 had a list of nine books) and each member of the Reading Committee was asked to indicate their preferences numerically from one to ten. Correspondence between literary women confirms the serious intent to ensure fairness and regularity in the voting process. For example, following a recommendation from Sheehy Skeffington for Nora Connolly O’Brien’s book Portrait of a Rebel Father (1935), Salkeld outlined the voting procedure, noting the complexities of the nomination process:

Last Wednesday, her book did get 5 votes against someone else’s 3 votes. BUT – some members have suggested that the proceedings were irregular, as all the books had admittedly not been read – & 3 readers had yet to read & report on Mrs Conyer’s detective novel: “The Trials of Evadne.” This last, has only been ready by 1 so far.⁵⁴

Although the material is sparse beyond 1937, the Reading Committee acted as a mediating network, an arbiter between author and their reading public, who voted according to personal tastes, judgements, and political preferences.

Correspondence between Salkeld and Sheehy Skeffington confirms that members of the Reading Committee included Sheehy Skeffington, Josephine Mc Neill, Mairead Ní Ghráda, Maeve Cavanagh MacDowell and Eithne Byrne. It is likely that founding members Salkeld, Macardle and Ethel G. Davidson (President in 1937) were actively engaged in the decision-making process. Salkeld alludes to this in a letter to Sheehy Skeffington in 1936: “I have withdrawn my book from list – owing to very remote possibilities of complication!”.⁵⁵

As a poet, public intellectual and owner of the private printing press, the Gayfield Press, Salkeld epitomises the pioneering spirit of the Women Writers’ Club. She organised events, hosted “at homes” and oversaw the judging process for the Book of the Year. Operating the Gayfield Press from her home on 43 Morehampton Road, Dublin, she published eight books as well as a series of broadsheets of poetry from 1937 to 1946.⁵⁶ She likewise adopted a business model that was contemporary and progressive, exhibited her press at the first Irish Book Fair in 1941, published limited editions, initiated a subscription-based revenue stream, and engaged in media events. Circulation statistics are elusive, but two hundred and fifty books and three hundred broadsheets were printed with each run. Salkeld promoted her books to a select market, reaching out to new customers through advertisements on the covers of her books, or by leveraging her connections in the artistic world.⁵⁷ These networks reached beyond those in the club to include playwrights, poets, publishers, and family relations including Mary Colum, Erica Marx, Sheila Wingfield, Brendan Behan, Teresa Deevy, James Stephens, Pearse Hutchinson, Austin Clarke, Patrick Kavanagh, Robert Greacen, Jack Sweeney (of the Poetry Room, Harvard), Iseult Gonne and Lennox Robinson.⁵⁸

Salkeld’s trajectory from poet and salonnière to publisher was fraught with challenges in terms of getting her work published. A letter Salkeld wrote to the publisher Harrap & Co in 1936 underlines these difficulties:

Mr Atkinson, On the strength of our mutual friendship for Mrs Tilson of Bangor, Co. Down, I take the liberty of sending my MSS. (verse) herewith to you personally for your consideration. Of course, I would be very glad if Harrap would care to publish it. In any case, I shall value your opinion. Is it too long? I don’t like the title, but will think of a better one … ⁵⁹

This was followed some five months later with a follow-up letter: “I’m sending you a copy of some 1937 stuff (you needn’t bother to return these at all.) What would you think of trying Ordinary [poem] for The Listener? Whatever you like”.⁶⁰ Her work was rejected outright. One publisher, Rolf Arnold Scott James, of the London Mercury, remarked bluntly that “the poems have merit, but I do not think they are quite good enough for the Mercury”.⁶¹ Establishing one’s own press gave a licence to publish without editorial interference. For Salkeld, this represented a shift of direction from poet to “artistic entrepreneur” with the freedom to publish her works.⁶² The first publication of the Gayfield Press, … the engine is left running (1937), consists of the collection of poems originally offered to Harrap. The book received second prize at the Annual Banquet in 1938, the second time she was the recipient of the Book of the Year award. She had previously received an award for her poetry collection, Hello Eternity (1933), published by the London publishers Elkin Mathews & Marrot. By the end of her career, Salkeld was perceived as a serious poet, receiving wide recognition for her contribution to Irish literature. She was awarded life membership of the Irish PEN in 1953.⁶³

Josephine McNeill, host, writer, and a committed public servant, regularly attended the Annual Banquet with her husband, James McNeill, the former Governor-General of the Irish Free State (1928–1932). Her networks extend to Christine Longford and Elizabeth Bowen, both of whom she corresponded with.⁶⁴ She was the Chair of the Irish Countrywomen's Association until 1950 when she was appointed Minister to the Netherlands.⁶⁵ Mairéad Ní Ghráda (1896–1971) was a poet and broadcaster with 2RN, later renamed Radio Eireann. She wrote scripts for radio and stage drama including her well-known play “An Triail”, a radical play of its time that depicted the hypocrisy of a patriarchal society.⁶⁶ It continues to be rated as one of the most successful plays in the Irish language and is featured in contemporary school curricula. Other members of the Committee included “Dr” [Ethne] Byrne, Dorothy Macardle and Sheehy Skeffington.⁶⁷

As previously stated, for many writers, their creative works represented an extension of their political viewpoints. For many their art and politics were interchangeable. One cogent example is the writer, republican, and Reading Committee member Dorothy Macardle. Her preoccupation with politics is hinted at in Motley in 1932:

A long silence followed the production of Miss Macardle’s play the Old Man, and we all feared the dramatist had been lost in the politician. But here she comes with a new three-act play, Dark Waters, which the Gate Theatre Company are presenting from the 13–24^th September. So all is well! ⁶⁸

Macardle’s reputation as a playwright was consolidated in the early years of the Irish Free State, but it was her polemic history of the nationalist struggle for independence, chronicled masterfully in her book The Irish Republic (1937) which won her both public recognition and The Book of the Year award in 1938. Described by her biographer Leeann Lane as “a complex and passionate activist,” Macardle’s development as a political propagandist, playwright, drama critic, and novelist situate her within a select group of intellectual activists of the period.⁶⁹ Political friendships with like-minded republicans including Sheehy Skeffington and Rosamond Jacob ensured the nationalist agenda was high on the nomination lists for the Book of the Year award. A letter from Macardle to Sheehy Skeffington confirms this: “We are a dud lot from the point of view of efficiency and your name got a large vote. It’s good too to have the Committee Republican”.⁷⁰ Co-opting Sheehy Skeffington onto the Reading Committee was expedient. Sheehy Skeffington brought to the network a vast array of national and international connections and a sharp intellect.

Sheehy Skeffington had a wide experience as a reader, reviewer of books and theatre, lecturer, and woman of letters. She regularly corresponded with bookshop owners, literary societies, newspaper editors and those involved in literary publishing. While in London, she cultivated networks within the literary milieu surrounding the aforementioned Minerva Club, including those connected to the newspaper Tide and Time, publishers George Allen & Unwin, and Jonathan Cape, among others. She was a lifelong avid reader, earning her income from a variety of sources. For example, a series of letters received from Jacob Schwartz, proprietor of the Ulysses Bookshop in London illustrates her negotiation with the collector for copies of The Day of the Rabblement (1901).⁷¹ This concerns a pamphlet featuring two essays written by James Joyce and Frank Skeffington (he later changed his surname to Sheehy Skeffington following his marriage to Hanna). Modernist bookshops represent intermediaries between commerce and art, acting as sites of commodity exchange and cultural importance. For women such as Sheehy Skeffington with limited financial means, these shops represented opportunities to trade literary artefacts for considerable sums. In 1930, for example, she was able to exchange published works by James Joyce and Frances Sheehy Skeffington for an undisclosed sum, thus redistributing the feminist ideals of her late husband, and those of the modernist Joyce, while gaining financially. Sheehy Skeffington’s connection to Joyce continued throughout the 1920s.⁷² A letter from the publisher and bookshop owner Sylvia Beach confirms this association: ⁷³

I am sending you with the copy of Ulysses that Mr Joyce is giving you, two reviews “Le Navine d’Angent” [sic] and “this quarter” containing fragments of his new work. I thought they would interest you.⁷⁴

Ulysses was widely circulated within Irish intellectual circles of the period and elicited a variety of responses. Rosamond Jacob, a prominent member of the club, questioned the reason for Joyce’s fondness for “pure ugliness”.⁷⁵ Sheehy Skeffington’s response is unclear, though the letter above suggests a continuation of cordial relations between her and Joyce forged in their earlier years as students.⁷⁶ Her biographer, Margaret Ward, reminds us that she was an avid reader who exhibited a “wide knowledge of history” and whose writing life was marked by a “consistency of [her] life-long commitment to feminism”.⁷⁷ As a reader on the Reading Committee, her reviews were sharp, witty, authoritative, and blunt. Famously, she described Helen Waddell’s Desert Fathers (1936) as “mainly translation under thread of narrative & […], I do not class it with […] work & do not place is as high as some of the authors [sic] other works”, also referring to Longford’s book A Biography of Dublin (1936) as “superficial & slight … A gossipy sort of guidebook – readable but easily forgotten”.⁷⁸

Philosophically, she identified with Woolf, and cited her in an article in the periodical The Vote in 1931: “Virginia Woolf finds that to be really independent and do creative work a woman should be in possession of at least £500 a year and entitled to a room of her own. But even that in the present state of the world does not solve the problem completely and forever”.⁷⁹ She was referring here to the challenges which she felt still existed in society, “right through school and college, shop, work-room or factory still runs the streak of prejudice”.⁸⁰ As a skilled orator, writer and reviewer, she regarded Woolf’s famous treatise on women in the professions Three Guineas (1938), as a “most remarkable book on feminism … those who read Room of One’s Own will find it a fine sequel, ampler, richer & more sweeping”.⁸¹ These sentiments were also expressed by others within the Women Writers’ Club, outlined below.

Other advanced republicans involved in the Reading Committee during this period included Maeve Cavanagh Mac Dowell, author of Sheaves of Revolt (1914). Cavanagh’s activism as a former member of the Irish Citizen Army (1913–1921) and poet of the revolution is little known, yet her poems, recently anthologised, reflect the republican ethos of her fellow members. ⁸² She is famously described as “the Poetess of the Revolution” for her recording of the 1916 Rising, an event she described in her witness statement for the Bureau of Military History 1913–1921.

He [James Connolly] was walking up and down and he suddenly stopped in front of me. “I wonder what we’ll call you”, he said. When the paper – “Workers” Republic – came out that week the placards were all over Dublin, “Great Revolutionary Poem by Maeve Cavanagh, the Poetess of the Revolution”. I felt very proud that day, because I had always admired the women poets of '48 and longed to be like them.⁸³

Keenly aware of the power of the written word in recording historical events, Cavanagh MacDowell cleverly pointed to the matrilineal heritage of women poets in her witness statement, reflecting personal and club ideologies.

Within the broader intellectual context, awarding the prize was a challenge to the received notions of womanhood, in that it valorised the significant contribution of nationalist women and the family to the revolutionary struggle and questioned the polarity of contemporary male-oriented narratives and nationalist violence.⁸⁴ At a business level, the prize represented an opportunity to market books and their authors and invite a new readership that was educated, female and modern.

The Book of the Year

The diversity of these winning texts – histories, collections of poetry, spiritual books, novels, and children’s stories – is representative of the type of books read in Ireland during this period. Existing scholarship confirms the average Irish reader’s preference for “the soft diet of nationalism and Celtic crosses in the home-produced material”, while romance and cowboy thrillers were the most popular imported books.⁸⁵ Urban buyers were more discerning: “fiction was most popular, followed by books on travel, Shakespeare’s plays, politics, science, botany, history, poetry and religion”.⁸⁶ The books celebrated by the Women Writers’ Club were aimed at a more sophisticated urban audience, albeit one more closely aligned with their ideals. The choice of winning texts straddles a variety of genres with a feminist sensibility. Poets, including Blanaid Salkeld and Temple Lane, critiqued patriarchy and the role of the Church through their depictions of women’s lives; while political women such as Nora Connolly O’Brien, Rosamond Jacob and Edna Fitzhenry highlighted the sacrifices of nationalist women and their families. The playwright Teresa Deevy, meanwhile, introduced non-conformist female characters who rebelled against Irish cultural mores and the restrictions of their lives. Progressives within the Women Writers’ Club used the power of the pen to inform, educate, and entertain their readers, while at the same time keeping alive the rich tradition of Irish women’s writing. Their political backgrounds tended to inspire their textual themes and their novels were heavily invested in highlighting the realities of women’s lives in the new nation-state, or in exposing the fallacy of the one-sided male narrative of the revolutionary struggle.

The dominant influence of advanced republicans within the Reading Committee can be gleaned from the high number of nationalist histories and novels which won or were honoured at the Book of the Year awards in the mid-1930s. These include Edna Fitzhenry’s history, Henry Joy McCracken (1936) which won joint-first with Helen Waddell for her translation of The Desert Fathers (1936) ironically following a talk by Nora Connolly O’Brien on the topic of “spiritualism” at the monthly meeting held in the Standard Hotel in 1936.⁸⁷ Honourary prizes were awarded to Rosamond Jacob for her history book, The Rise of the United Irishmen, 1791–1794, (1937) and her fictional history of the War of Independence, The Troubled House (1938). Memoirs such as Nora Connolly O’Brien’s Portrait of a Rebel Father (1935), and Maud Gonne MacBride’s A Servant of the Queen (1938) received first prize and an honourary prize, respectively. Dorothy Macardle’s major history book, The Irish Republic (1937), won first prize in 1938, was famously endorsed by the Taoiseach Eamon de Valera, and as one glowing newspaper suggests, marketed as a scholarly book:

As a book of reference “The Irish Republic” is invaluable. With it beside him as a guide, the student interested in any particular event or phase of the period can proceed at once to his investigations without any of the distracting time-wasting preparatory searches hitherto necessary. But it is not from the historical student's standpoint that I think “The Irish Republic” should be chiefly appraised. It is as an epic story of the great endeavour of a people told, as it should be told, with simplicity and truth – as a story that will inspire the future youth of our nation and teach them the wisdom without which high enterprise cannot be pursued to success – as a story that will warn them of the tragedy that ever lies close by when great deeds are attempted.⁸⁸

These epic accounts of historical figures and events challenged received male-nationalist histories, and this particular book was targeted at the educational market and the discerning and often more prosperous reader. In the case of The Irish Republic, book sales flourished, despite its high price of 25/net. ⁸⁹ According to four separate small publishers (Browne and Nolan Ltd, Fred Hanna, W.J. Humphries, and The Sign of the Three Candles), in March 1937, The Irish Republic was top of the reading list.⁹⁰ Less than one month later, it continued to top the list of Eason and Son, Ltd, one of the most important distributors in Ireland during this period.⁹¹ According to Leeann Lane, the publisher Victor Gollancz circulated a cheaper version of it amongst the British Left Book Club proclaiming “it has been in great demand among the 45,000 members”.⁹² The association with the Left Book Club, a club renowned for its “provocative marketing” contextualises Macardle and her milieu within the wider Anglophone tradition, one which was noted for its association with “the high intellectual standard of its books”.⁹³

Other writers celebrated during the formative years of the prize included Patricia Lynch for her children’s fiction The Turfcutters Children (1934), later renamed The Turfcutters Donkey, and Elizabeth Bowen for her novel The Death of the Heart (1938). Poetry collections were held in high esteem. Salkeld won first and second prizes for her collections of poetry, Hello Eternity (1934) and … the engine is left running (1937), while Temple Lane received first prize for her collection of poetry Fisherman’s Wake (1940).

From 1940 until the demise of the Women Writers’ Club in 1958, there was a notable shift in the type of books chosen for the Book of the Year. Banned books got a special mention with authors including Ethel Mannin, Kate O’Brien and Maura Laverty singled out for prizes. A letter to Madeline Ross, following the banning of Laverty’s novel Alone We Embark (1943) provides evidence of intent:

The Club is fortunate in having this opportunity to register its protest against the banning of Maura Laverty’s novel, and I am grateful for being allowed to take part although absent, in this protest, and in congratulating the author on a very graceful, very Irish and very human book.⁹⁴

The decision to officially support Laverty was a means of lessening any reputational damage caused by censorship while positing Laverty as a writer of literary merit. As new writers joined, the breadth and scope of the winning texts expanded to include popular novels, plays, modernist poetry, travel books and anthologies. One text, in particular, calls attention to the philosophical intent of the club and its Reading Committee.

In the foreword of the 1944 anthology, Women Writers: Their Contribution to the English Novel 1621–1744, the author Bridget MacCarthy highlighted the complexities of being a woman writer and evoked the question raised fifteen years earlier in Virginia Woolf’s polemic essay, A Room of One’s Own (1929): “If Shakespeare had had a sister endowed with literary powers, could she have won to success in that early period?” Like Woolf, and Sheehy Skeffington, MacCarthy concluded that success depended on equal access to education and economic resources: “Literary fame and, later, financial success depended on playing the game at least as well as their masculine adversaries”. The standards by which women were judged depended on the rules of the “game” laid down by men. If women wrote to their standard and expected to receive societal approval, they needed to be “not merely as good as, but better than their opponents”.⁹⁵ For this epic scholarship, MacCarthy was awarded the Book of the Year in 1945. Fellow member Maura Laverty described it as a “treasure-trove” for the ordinary reader and a book which provided “fairly satisfying reasons for the disparity between the achievements of men and those of women”.⁹⁶ In her acceptance speech, MacCarthy commented that “Women writers of earlier times had established a tradition and an equality which was valued by the women writers of the present day”, reminding the reading public of the rich genealogy of women writers and the commitment of contemporary writers to these ideals. ⁹⁷

The last known recipient of the prize was the feminist activist Rosamond Jacob who received the first prize in 1958 for her novel, The Rebel’s Wife (1957).⁹⁸ Initially written as a life story of Matilda Tone, the wife of the revolutionary Theobald Wolfe Tone, it resurfaced in a bio-fictional format having been turned down by publishers. It acts as a fitting tribute to its author, whose life as a literary and political activist represented the ideals of the Women Writers’ Club and whose book recuperated the hidden history of a heroic Irish nationalist woman.

Legacy of the Reading Committee

The history of the Reading Committee reveals the diversity of agents involved in the communication of ideas. Readers add value to the production and consumption of literary works while reading committees influence the books nominated for literary prizes. In negotiating the space between publisher and reader, and promulgating a specific form of feminist writing, the choices of the Women Writer's Club and their Reading Committee have survived as a means of documenting the alternative book culture which emanated during this era. Their efforts were buoyed by the collaborative networks between literary and political women, intent on creating and maintaining a space for women's literature.

The overarching impact of winning the prize is difficult to assess economically without definitive statistical records. As a force of change, the legacy of the club survives in the form of the artefact that is the book as a disseminator of ideas and knowledge of a period. It endures in the afterlife of books held in Ireland’s libraries, and the future scholarship informed by their work. New, yet undiscovered, material may yet shed new light on the composition of the Reading Committee and its intentions. What is clear is the conscious strategy to reach out directly to their readers, circumvent impediments to book circulation and celebrate their achievements through the awarding of a literary prize. As a backlash against censorship, it served to support a discredited writer, restoring her prestige and integrity, and shoring up potential book sales. Exploring the relationship between commerce and art through “little magazines” such as Motley and the history of the repertory theatre demonstrates the dichotomy between public performance and private business concerns. The alliances cultivated during the early days of the Irish Free State led to new collaborations and interrelationships in avant-garde circles which later found expression in the radical coterie of the female-only club. The reason for the club's demise is speculative. Many of the original members passed away and newer members joined forces with the international writer’s club, Irish P.E.N. Their legacy is the emergence of the Irish professional women writer in the public sphere, which kept alive the tradition of women’s writing for the future generations. It is within these alternative spaces that we can explore how our foremothers played a critical role in fostering an alternative female-centric space in the literary realm.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Brady, Literary Coteries and the Irish Women Writers’ Club (1933–1958). Hereafter Brady, Literary Coteries, and page no.

2 See also Meaney, “Rosamond Jacob and the Hidden Histories of Irish Writing”, 72.

3 For an interesting perspective of the period, see Sisson, “A Note on What Happened”, 132–48.

4 Christine Longford, Motley, no. II.3 (1932), 4–5. Hereafter Longford, Motley, and the page no.

5 L.H.Y. “Reviews”, Motley, no. 3.2 (circa 1933), 14–15.

6 Christine Longford, 4. For Paige Reynold’s account of Manning artistic life, see Reynolds “The Avant-Garde Doyenne”, 108–33.

7 Christine Longford, 4.

8 Ibid.

9 One of the characteristics of the repertory theatre is the continuous production of plays – in this case, as indicated by Longford, every week.

10 Longford, 5.

11 Produced by Packenham in March 1932, it starred Hilton Edwards acting in the role of “Hero Agrippa” and Micheál Mac Liammóir in the leading role of “Titus”.See Playography Ireland, “Plays”, https://www.irishplayography.com/play.aspx?playid=31818 for a list of plays by Longford and other playwrights.

12 The Irish Press, 25 March 1936.

13 Shelagh Richards produced the play with the set and costumes designed by Louis Le Brocquy (son of Sybil le Brocquy). For a detailed account of the contribution of women to the theatre, see Clare, McDonagh and Nakasa, The Golden Thread.

14 When invited by the writer Andrew E. Malone to join Irish PEN in 1938, and “give up a little of their independence to become an autonomous section of the PEN club”, they declined politicly stating: “they belonged to other literary club, but this was a sort of side-show”. The Irish Times, 4 February 1938. Their determination to remain autonomous was a principle they adhered to throughout their twenty-five-year tenure.

15 One example includes the American National Women’s Party. Correspondence from Mary Gertrude Frudall, the National Women’s Party (Washington D.C.) to Hanna Sheehy Skeffington demonstrates the vast networks connected to Sheehy Skeffington. Listed on the letterhead dated 7 May 1926, is the list of thirty-nine “Chairmen” involved in the party, complete with titles and geographical centres. Beneath this is a list of the “Chairmen of Professional Councils” classified as, “Actresses, Authors, Musicians, Dentists, Physicians, Nurses, Scientists, Journalists, Lawyers and Homemakers” amongst others, alongside a list of “International Advisory Councils”. The letter concerns the envoy attending the Congress of the International Woman’s Suffrage Alliance in Paris in 1926. Sheehy Skeffington Papers (Additional), MS 82, MSS40,460–40,563;41,176–41,245, MS 41,178 /45, National Library of Ireland.

16 Brady, Literary Coteries, 64.

17 Correspondences in the private papers of Hanna Sheehy Skeffington demonstrate the importance of Time and Tide for reviews, and editorial work, and the vast feminist networks behind the publishing industry.

18 Sheehy Skeffington 82, MS 41,178 /80. [sic] refers to missing word. Letter from Betty Gram Swing to Hanna Sheehy Skeffington dated 24 October 1933, entitled “Mass Meeting for the Right of Married Woman to Earn” lists twenty-seven supportive organisations for the campaign. The “Chairman of Organizing Committee” is named as Mrs Pethick Lawrence, with “Miss Betty Archdale”, as “Hon. Secretary”. Betty Archdale was the daughter of Helen Archdale, feminist, member of the Women’s Social and Political Union (W.S.P.U.) and editor of the feminist newspaper, Time and Tide up to 1926. Her [Helen's] circles included Lady Rhondda, Winifred Holtby and Rebecca West. West joined the board of Time and Tide in 1922. See Clay, “The Modern Weekly for the Modern Woman”, 399.

19 See Luddy, “A Sinister and Retrogressive Proposal”, 177–85, and Brady, Literary Coteries, 63–5.

20 Margaret Ward makes this point succinctly. For more on the life and politics of Hanna Sheehy Skeffington, see Ward, Hanna Sheehy Skeffington, Suffragette and Sinn Féiner, 67. Thereafter, Ward, Hanna Sheehy Skeffington.

21 Ward, Hanna Sheehy Skeffington, 428, 430, FN16.The Minerva Club was based in 28 A Brunswick Square, Bloomsbury. It was initially founded in 1920 by Dr Elizabeth Knight, a leading member of the Women’s Freedom League. In 1924, it underwent new management under the guise of Marian Reeves. For more on the Minerva Club, see Doughan and Gordon, Women, Clubs and Associations in Britain.

22 For an interesting account of the split between British feminist groups post-suffrage, see Kent, “The Politics of Sexual Difference”, 240–4.

23 Ward, Hanna Sheehy Skeffington, 67–70.

24 Staveley, “Marketing Virginia Woolf”, 295–339.

25 Ibid, 296.

26 Ward, Hanna Sheehy Skeffington, Suffragette and Sinn Féiner, 330. Hereafter, Margaret Ward, Hanna Sheehy Skeffington, and page no. It is worth noting the emphasis on the qualification of Mary Hayden, one of a group of female academics involved in the National University Women Graduates Association, and the Women Writers’ Club. Educational markers signalled a means of making visible women’s qualifications in the “learned” professions. Several postcards addressed to Sheehy Skeffington in the 1930s include the academic qualifications M.A. displayed beside her name. See Sheehy Skeffington, 82, MS41,176/5.

27 Ward, Hanna Sheehy Skeffington, 343.

28 The Irish Academy of Letters was established by W. B. Yeats and George Bernard Shaw in 1932, to elevate Irish literature and challenge censorship. I have previously argued that the occlusion of a large cohort of Irish women writers led to the establishment of the Irish Women Writers' Club. Irish PEN was formally established in 1934 to promote Irish literature in the international market. Many of the Women Writers” Club held dual membership. For more on this, see Brady, Literary Coteries, Chapter One.

29 For a comprehensive account of gender politics of the period, see Valiulis, “The Politics of Gender in the Irish Free State, 1922–1937”, 569–78.

30 There are countless examples where members endorsed and supported the work of members. Examples include the collaborative authorship of the children’s book, Lisheen and the Valley, and Other Stories (1946) by Patricia Lynch, Helen Staunton, and Teresa Deevy, as a means of supporting the printing press, the Gayfield Press, owned by Blanaid Salkeld. Other examples include Dorothy Macardle acknowledging the support of fellow – members in her history book, The Irish Republic (1938), and Edna Fitzhenry’s acknowledgements in her preface to her historical account of the life of Henry Joy McCracken (1936). Temple Lane’s write-up of Teresa Deevy’s work in The Dublin Magazine in 1946, and Blanaid Salkeld’s review of Sheila Pim’s gardening guide The Flowering Shamrock, in the periodical Irish Writing in 1949 are other examples. Brady, Literary Coteries,122.

31 Jeri English notes the importance of prefaces in lending symbolic capitol to texts. See English, “Literary Patronage: Collaboration or Rivalry?, 126–39.

32 Salkeld to Sheehy Skeffington 7 February 1934. The address listed is 43 Morehampton Road, Pembroke, which was the home of Salkeld. The Redbank Restaurant address is listed as D’Olier Street. Sheehy Skeffington, 82, MS41,178/82.

33 Salkeld to Sheehy Skeffington 23 April 1934. Sheehy Skeffington, 82, MS41,178/2.

34 Vadillo, “New Woman Poets and the Culture of the Salon at the fin de siècle”, 25.

35 The Irish Times, 24 March, 1939.

36 Salkeld to Sheehy Skeffington 23 April 1934. Sheehy Skeffington, 82, MS41,178/2.

37 It should be noted that the Irish Academy of Letters initiated several of literary awards including the Gregory Medal, for Literature and Drama, the O’Growney Award for “best work of the imagination published in Gaelic”, the Casement award for “best work of poetry and drama, and the Harmsworth award for the “best work of imaginative prose”. With few exceptions, the prizes were awarded to a mainly male fraternity. See Brady, Literary Coteries, 31–2.

38 Sapiro, “The Metamorphosis of Modes of Consecration in the Literary Field’, 5–19.

39 English, The Economy of Prestige, 4–5.

40 The Irish Times, 4 February 1938.

41 The Irish Times, 20 March 1936.

42 Ibid.

43 The Irish Press, 19 February 1937.

44 The Irish Times, 4 February 1938.

45 The Irish Times, 27 March 1936.

46 The Irish Press, 25 March 1936.

47 For a list of books available for subscription from the American Catholic Book Club, see Editors, Catholic Book Club Archives” (1915), https://www.americamagazine.org/arts-culture/2015/01/30/catholic-book-club-archives-216980.

48 Ó h Uid, “The First Irish Book Club”, The Irish Press, 11 March 1950. John Brannigan notes that Irish writers had connections with British and American Catholic Book Clubs, including the Catholic Book Club of America and the Catholic Book Club (London). See Brannigan, “Intermodernism and the Middlebrow in Irish Writing”, 107–8.

49 For more on book clubs, see Norrick-Rühl, Book Clubs and Book Commerce, 49. Hereafter Rühl, Book Clubs, and the page no.

50 Eggert, “Social Discourse or Authorial Agency”.

51 Caoilfhionn Ní Bheacháin and Angus Mitchell point to the difficulties of researching women’s intellectual exchange and “soft political power” due to the ephemeral and often intangible nature of networks. In the case of the Women Writers’ Club, no official documentation exists except for fragments found in literary correspondences, newspapers, official documentation, or avant-garde journals of the period. See Ní Bheacháin and Mitchell, “Alice Stopford Green and Vernon Lee”, 82.

52 Sheehy Skeffington, 82, MS 41,178/94.

53 Ibid. The circular reads “Memo Women Writers” Club – General Meeting, 1st May 1936, Agenda”. Blanaid Salkeld, signed this document, acting as honorary secretary. MS 47, Sheehy Skeffington Papers, MS 33,619/14.

54 This excerpt is recorded in Brady, Literary Coteries, 80.

55 Circular letter from Salkeld to Hanna Sheehy Skeffington, circa 30 January 1936, Sheehy Skeffington Papers, MS 47, MSS 33,607/13. The book she refers to here is likely to be The Fox’s Covert, published in 1935.

56 A full account of the Gayfield Press can be accessed on the digital platform M.A.P.P., https://modernistarchdives.com/business/the-gayfield-press.

57 Milne, Forty North, Fifty West.

For example, on the back cover of Ewart Milne’s collection of poetry, Forty North Fifty West (1938). It reads: “If you are not on our mailing list, please send us your name and poetry.”

58 For a history of the Gayfield Press, see Brady, “Modernist Presses and the Gayfield Press”, 113–28.

59 Salkeld to F. McCurdie Atkinson, Harrap & Sons Ltd., 30 November 1936, held in the Eberly Family Special Collections Library, PENN State University.

60 Ibid. 5 April 1937.

61 Rolf Arnold Scott James to F.M. Atkinson, 2 December 1937, held in the Eberly Family Special Collections Library, PENN State University.

62 The term “artistic entrepreneur” is coined by Zoe Thomas in her study on women in business in the British Arts & Crafts industry who, in a manner like Salkeld, used their social and cultural strategies to build their profile and reputation. See Thomas, Between Art and Commerce.

63 Minutes Irish P.E.N. 17 December 1954. Irish P.E.N. Papers, 1935–2004, National Library of Ireland, Dublin PEN Centre minute books, 1935–2004, MSS 49,143–49,144.

64 For example, correspondences between Christine Pakenham (Longford) to McNeill in 1931 and Elizabeth Bowen in the 1940s and 1950s indicate the close relationships between these women. See Papers of Josephine McNeill, P234/162-3, and P234/8-12, Descriptive Catalogue, UCD Archives (Dublin: University College Dublin, 2009).

65 Michael Kennedy “McNeill, Josephine, Dictionary of Irish Biography, https://www.dib.ie/biography/mcneill-josephine-a5284. Kennedy writes of her success as a noted host, and writer about social, cultural, and economic issues. She was a former member of Cumann na mBan and represented Ireland at Paris UNESCO general assembly in 1949.

66 Biography Notes – Mairéad Ní Ghráda, Clare County Library, https://www.clarelibrary.ie/eolas/coclare/people/nighrada.htm.

67 This assumption is based on Ethne Byrne's inclusion in the petition against the Draft Constitution in 1937. The petition was signed by twenty-nine writers involved with the Women Writers’ Club and addressed to Eamon De Valera in May 1937. She also gave a talk to the club in 1936. See Brady, Literary Coteries, 62, Chapter Two.

68 Motley, 1.4, (1932) 9.

69 Lane, Dorothy Macardle, 3–6.

70 Dorothy Macardle to Sheehy Skeffington, Sheehy Skeffington Papers, 82, MS41,178/81.

71 Schwartz to Sheehy Skeffington, circa 1930, Papers of Sheehy Skeffington, 82, MS41178/63. Hereafter Schwartz, MS41178/63. The letter is addressed as 187 High Holborn, London, W.C. 1.

72 James Joyce gave a copy of Ulysses to Sheehy Skeffington in Paris in 1926 when she attended the Congress of the International Woman’s Suffrage Alliance. Meaney, “Rosamond Jacob and the Hidden Histories of Irish Writing”, 73. It may well be that she received more than one copy.

73 Sylvia Beach was the first publisher of Joyce’s Ulysses and owner of the Parisian bookshop “Shakespeare and Company”.

74 Beach to Sheehy Skeffington 10 June 1926. The magazine This Quarter was a 'little' magazine run by the poet Ernest Walsh and Ethel Moorhead, a Scottish Suffragette. Sheehy Skeffington Papers, 82, MS41,178/45.

75 Jacob received her copy from Sheehy Skeffington. See Lane, Rosamond Jacob, 194.

76 Ward, Hanna Sheehy Skeffington, 30.

77 Ibid., 395-6.

78 “Memo on Books for W.W. Club”, Sheehy-Skeffington Papers, MS47, MS33,619/14.

79 Ward, Hanna Sheehy Skeffington, 322.

80 Ibid, 323.

81 Sheehy Skeffington Papers, 82, MS41,188/1.

82 See, for example, Moylan, ed. The Indignant Muse. The poetry of Cavanagh is featured throughout the book.

83 This quip by James Connolly is recounted by Maeve Cavanagh Mac Dowell in the witness statements of members of the Irish Citizen Army 1913–1921. Bureau of Military History, 1913–1921. Document S.W. 258.

84 Danae O’Regan has made the point that the questioning of violence and progressive ideas in Rosamond Jacob’s novel The Troubled House (1937) may have caused disquiet amongst nationalist readers. See O’Regan, “Representations and Attitudes of Republican Women in the Novels of Annie M.P Smithson (1873–1948) and Rosamond Jacob (1888–1960)”, 81–95.

85 Russell, “Holy Crosses, Guns and Roses”.

86 Meaney et al., Reading the Irish Woman, 137.

87 “Memo on Books for W.W. Club”, 1937, Sheehy-Skeffington Papers, MS47, MS33,619/14.

88 The Irish Times, 4 February 1938.

89 The Irish Times, 3 April 1937.

90 The Irish Times, 20 March 1937.

91 The Irish Times, 3 April 1937.

92 Lane, Dorothy Macardle, 188.

93 For a history of book clubs, see Rühl, Book Clubs, 49.

94 Dorothy Macardle to Madeleine Ross, 24 Apr. 1944 (N.L.I. Maura Laverty Papers, MS 50,678).

95 MacCarthy, Women Writers, 23–4.

96 Ibid, back cover page.

97 Ibid. More recent scholarship has identified a rich and prolific lineage of women writers in Ireland during the nineteenth and twentieth century. For example, Gerardine Meaney has identified over 9,334 texts from literary women between 1800 to 2005. See Meaney, Gender, Ireland and Cultural Change. See also Brady, Literary Coteries.

98 Jacob, The Rebel’s Wife.