Category Archives: History

Reporting Matt Talbot’s life and death, then and now

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Matt Talbot, a role model for many people battling alcoholism and addiction, died June 7, 1925, in a Dublin alleyway. He was on his way to Mass; an austere Catholicism being key to his sobriety. Then an anonymous ascetic, today Talbot is considered for sainthood.

The only known image of Matt Talbot.

The Dublin press missed Talbot’s public passing; no one- or two-sentence brief under a headline such as “Laborer Collapses Near Church.” There was no obituary–“Talbot, Matthew, 1856-1925.” This seems fitting given Talbot’s determined avoidance of newspapers, lest the headlines “violate the interior space of his soul” and distract from his prayer life. [1]James F. Cassidy, Matt Talbot: The Irish Worker’s Glory. [Westminster, Maryland: Newsman Press, 1934],4.

But details of Talbot’s death, and life, began to emerge in the Irish press before the end of 1925. A small pamphlet written by Sir Joseph A. Glynn of the Catholic Truth Society, Dublin, gained popular attention.[2]”Catholic Outlook: Dublin Laborer’s Remarkable Life of Penance”, The Nationalist and Munster Advertiser, Dec. 5, 1925. Talbot’s story of self-denial spread to the United States, then five years into a 13-year period of federally-enforced prohibition. In 1928 Glynn published a more detailed, 116-page account about Talbot.

Catholic faithful and the recovery community have kept Talbot in the press ever since. There’s a Wikipedia page, and plenty of other online content. A docudrama about Talbot’s life is in production. Press accounts of the 1879 Marian apparition at Knock, County Mayo, also were delayed until believers similarly promoted the event through literature and pilgrimages. It is now a tourist stop.

People stand where Matt Talbot died in Granby Lane, Dublin, in June 1925. The large building in center background is St. Saviour’s Church, where he attended Mass. Image from Glynn’s 1928 book about Talbot.

Talbot mirrored–as in reflected but reversed–another Irishman, Father Theobald Mathew (1790-1856). The Tipperary-born Capuchin priest became widely known as the “apostle of temperance.” From 1849-1951 he administered his famous abstinence pledge in the United States. Talbot, as noted above, was an unknown laborer who probably never ventured beyond Dublin’s Grand and Royal canals. He kept his piety and his 41 years of sobriety to himself.

“Perhaps no two men in history led such dissimilar lives, but with such similar and effective application of purpose,” a Catholic journalist observed in a 1956 article that marked the centenary of Talbot’s birth, seven months before Mathews’ death.[3]”1956 Centenary Year of Father Mathew, Matt Talbot”, The Catholic Northwest Progress, April 20, 1956.

The Catholic Church declared Talbot venerable in 1973. The early step toward sainthood seems to have stalled since then, but the Knights of St Columbanus are using the centenary of his death to renew the effort. Talbot is still a step ahead of Father Mathew. Both men are remembered with statues and other markers in Dublin and other parts of Ireland.

As other writers have noted, Talbot’s aversion to newspapers appears to have been inspired by Bishop John Hedley, an English Benedictine and editor of the Dublin Review. Talbot is said to have underlined this passage of Hedley’s book, On Reading:

Even when the newspaper is free from objection, it is easy to lose a good deal of time over it. It may be necessary and convenient to know what is going on in the world. But there can be no need of our observing all the rumors, all the guesses and gossip, all the petty incidents, all the innumerable paragraphs in which the solid news appears half-drowned, like the houses and hedges when the floods are out. This is idle and is absolutely bad for the brain and character.

Hedley’s view certainly applies to much of today’s online content, just as it did to early twentieth century Dublin newspapers. I leave to readers’ judgement whether it applies to Talbot’s story, or to this post.

Headline of 1926 profile of Matt Talbot in the Tablet, a Catholic newspaper in Brooklyn, NY.

References

References
↑1 James F. Cassidy, Matt Talbot: The Irish Worker’s Glory. [Westminster, Maryland: Newsman Press, 1934],4.
↑2 ”Catholic Outlook: Dublin Laborer’s Remarkable Life of Penance”, The Nationalist and Munster Advertiser, Dec. 5, 1925.
↑3 ”1956 Centenary Year of Father Mathew, Matt Talbot”, The Catholic Northwest Progress, April 20, 1956.

A trio of Irish miscellany from May

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Here are three unrelated items about Ireland during the merry, merry month:

  • UCC exhibit

I was delighted to contribute some research and materials to “The Irish Revolution in the African American Press” exhibition at University College Cork. It is focused on how the US black press covered three key events:

  • De Valera’s tour of America (1919–20)
  • MacSwiney’s hunger strike death (1920)
  • The Anglo-Irish Treaty (1921-22)

Dr. Jemima Hodgkinson, a Research Ireland postdoctoral fellow specializing in the history of anti-slavery and anti-colonial movements, curated the exhibit. It is open until July 14 at the Boole Library, ground floor.

  • Irish couture 

The dress at the left forefront was created by Dublin designer Jennifer Rothwell for Irish Ambassador to the United States Geraldine Byrne Nason. It was featured in the “Fashioning Power, Fashioning Peace” Exhibition and Gala at the President Woodrow Wilson House in Washington, D.C. Former US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was the honoree of the annual fundraiser. The silk dress is a tribute to St. Brigid, whose reflected image can be seen extending from each shoulder. To the right are pieces from Singapore and Chez Republic. This display was in the library of the house where Wilson–seen in the portrait–lived from the end of his presidency in March 1921 until his death in February 1924. I work at the museum as a part-time guide. 

  • Times letter

Irish Times columnist Fintan O’Toole wrote about the numerical decline and lay distrust of the priesthood. He suggested Ireland has become “mentally ditched from Catholic history as a lost cause that is best forgotten.” My letter to the Times editor disagreed.

Revisiting William Brayden’s 1925 ‘survey’ of Ireland

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Journalist William H. Brayden produced in the summer of 1925 what he called “a survey of the newly constructed institutions of the self-governing Irish people.” The country’s violent revolutionary period had ended two years earlier. As Brayden set about his assessment, an intergovernmental commission considered whether to adjust the border that partitioned the six-county Northern Ireland from the 26-county Irish Free State, today’s Republic of Ireland.

Cover of booklet that collected Brayden’s 16-part series.

Brayden’s reporting appeared in 16 dispatches to the Chicago Daily News[1]“Ireland No Longer Distressful Country”, June 16; “Tenants In Ireland Now Owners of Land”, June 18; “Irish System Of Law Rules in Free State”, June 20; “Make Irish Schools Fit Needs Of … Continue reading and other US papers that subscribed to its foreign news service. The Chicago daily republished the completed series as a 45-page booklet.[2]William H. Brayden, The Irish Free State: a survey of the newly constructed institutions of the self-governing Irish people, together with a report on Ulster. [Chicago: Chicago Daily News, 1925]

This summer I will explore various aspects of Brayden’s reporting from Ireland, including the Irish Boundary Commission and other political issues. He detailed economic, social, and cultural conditions as he traveled from Dublin to Kilkenny, Cork, Limerick and Belfast. I am working from this digitized copy of Brayden’s booklet, but also reviewed the original Daily News series on microfilm. The Roman numeral section headings in the booklet correspond to the 16 installments in the series. The booklet was lightly edited to remove teases to upcoming subjects and publication notes.

I will collect my posts about Brayden on the site’s American reporting of Irish independence landing page. Reader input is welcomed. Now, let’s begin with a look at Brayden.

William John Henry Brayden (1865-1933)

Brayden was born in Armagh city (County Armagh, Northern Ireland). He worked briefly on the Ulster Gazette and then on the Leinster Leader in Naas, County Kildare, before joining the national Freeman’s Journal in Dublin in 1883. He eventually became the FJ’s editor, and in that role makes a brief appearance in James Joyce’s Ulysses.[3]See “Brayden, William John Henry” by Felix Larkin, Dictionary of Irish Biography, October 2009.

Brayden was born into a Church of Ireland and unionist family. He converted to Catholicism as a young man and supported Irish home rule. He briefly assisted Dublin Castle, the British administration in Ireland, with anti-Sinn Féin propaganda at the end of the world war.

William Brayden, undated image published at the time of his death in December 1933.

Brayden began working as a correspondent for the US-based Associated Press and the Chicago Daily News during Ireland’s revolutionary period, 1912-1923. His byline appeared regularly in US newspapers. Notably, he reported the May 1919 arrival of the American Commission on Irish Independence in Dublin.

Edward F. Dunne, former mayor of Chicago, was one of the three Irish American commissioners. Their “oratory of the American pattern outclasse[d] the home product” and made a strong impression on the locals, Brayden reported. None of the Sinn Féin republicans or Irish Parliamentary Party moderates who welcomed the trio could match “the ringing eloquence and the modulated rise and fall of striking appeal which the Americans displayed to the crowds that listened to them spellbound.”[4]“American Orator Beat Irish Brand”, (Baltimore) Evening Sun, May 15, 1919.

It does not appear that Brayden ever visited the United States, at least according to limited biographical material. He is not profiled in several early twentieth century “who’s who” collections of American journalists. Brayden’s name does not surface in digitized US arriving passenger manifests or passport application lists.

In this regard Brayden is similar to his peer James Mark Tuohy (1857–1923), another Irish-born, former Freeman’s Journal journalist who became a correspondent for the New York World at the turn of the twentieth century. “Although he never set foot in the United States, he was dean of the corps of American newspaper correspondents in London,” the New York Times declared in its obituary of Tuohy. Other Irish-born journalists who covered their country’s revolutionary period spent significant time in the United States, including John Steele (1887-1947) of the Chicago Tribune and Francis Hackett (1883-1962) of the New Republic.

In December 1931, Brayden began writing for the Washington, DC-based National Catholic Welfare Conference News Service. He died two years later, just three days after filing what appears to have been his last story. (“590 Are Registered at Peking Cath. Univ.” The Catholic Transcript, Dec. 14, 1933)

Series opening

The Daily News did not advertise Brayden’s series before its June 16, 1925, debut, unlike the promotional treatments US papers gave to similar work by correspondents sent to Ireland during the revolution. Chicago’s Irish immigrant population had peaked at 74,000 in 1900 and dropped to 57,000 by 1920, tied for third largest with Boston. The US Immigration Act of 1924 further slowed new arrivals, but Chicago retained a robust American Irish Catholic identity.

Brayden’s first story appeared on the front page above the fold; a box of baseball scores and horse racing results to the left, a lurid tale about the shooting deaths of two Chicago gangsters who also were big opera supporters on the right. The single-column headlines declared:

Ireland No Longer
Distressful Country
—

Remarkable Changes Effect-
ed by New Governments
Under Home Rule.
—
Many Signs of Progress

An italicized editor’s note described Brayden as the paper’s “capable and experienced Dublin correspondent.” It said the series would detail “how the people of Ulster (Northern Ireland) and those of the Free State are improving their opportunity to govern themselves.” Brayden’s opening sentence posed this question:  “What is Ireland doing with the home rule that, after long conflict, it has won?”

His series sought to answer this question as it unspooled in Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday installments through July 23. The stories were not accompanied by any photographs, though the Daily News and other papers by then regularly featured black and white images of events and places, including overseas, and “head shots” of individual news makers.

Other papers that subscribed to the foreign news service either published the full series, such as the Buffalo (NY) News, or only select stories. The Kansas City Star described Brayden’s series as “a very illuminating analysis of the many problems which have confronted the new governments, and of the thoroughly practical ways, considering Ireland’s unique adventure, in which these problems are being met and solved.”[5]“ ‘More Business, Less Politics’ is the Slogan of the Irish Nation”, Kansas City Star, Aug. 10, 1925.

Considering Brayden’s long experience in Irish journalism and the critical post-revolutionary period that he detailed, his 1925 “survey” is worthy of revisiting a century later.

References

References
↑1 “Ireland No Longer Distressful Country”, June 16; “Tenants In Ireland Now Owners of Land”, June 18; “Irish System Of Law Rules in Free State”, June 20; “Make Irish Schools Fit Needs Of People”, June 23;  “Show Irish Capacity For Efficient Rule”, June 25; “Building Industries In Irish Free State”, June 27; “Power For Ireland From River Shannon”, June 30; “Ireland Now Deals With Other Nations”, July 2; “Irish Free State Is Able To Pay Its Way”, July 7; “Kilkenny Busy Spot In Ireland’s Trade”, July 9; “Cork Is Recovering From Its War Wounds”; July 11; “Limerick Is Lively: Its Outlook Bright”, July 14; “Irish Bank Deposits Mark of Prosperity”, July 16; “Home Rule In Ulster Unlike Free State’s”, July 18; “Belfast Is Hard Hit By Business Slump”, July 21; “New Ireland’s Place In Arts And Letters”, July 23. The first story began on the front page; all others on page 2.
↑2 William H. Brayden, The Irish Free State: a survey of the newly constructed institutions of the self-governing Irish people, together with a report on Ulster. [Chicago: Chicago Daily News, 1925]
↑3 See “Brayden, William John Henry” by Felix Larkin, Dictionary of Irish Biography, October 2009.
↑4 “American Orator Beat Irish Brand”, (Baltimore) Evening Sun, May 15, 1919.
↑5 “ ‘More Business, Less Politics’ is the Slogan of the Irish Nation”, Kansas City Star, Aug. 10, 1925.

Leo XIV recalls Leo XIII’s 1888 intrigues in Ireland

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Pope Leo XIII

The elevation of American-born Robert Francis Prevost as the 267th pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church, and his decision to take the name Leo XIV, has prompted coverage about his namesake predecessor, Leo XIII, who reigned from 1878 until his death in 1903.

And that’s reason enough to reprise two stories about the former pope’s 19th century intrigues in Ireland. Each story linked below covers the same episode from different perspectives.

Ireland Under Coercion, Revisited: Pope’s decree: American journalist William Henry Hurlbert was in Ireland when Pope Leo XIII issued a decree that condemned the “mode of warfare called the Plan of Campaign” and the associated violence of “a form of proscription … known as boycotting.”

The troubled foundation of St. Patrick’s in Rome, 1888: Construction of St. Patrick’s Church in the Eternal City began the same year as Leo XIII issued his decree, which created friction with his Irish flock.

As prior general of the Augustine order from 2001 to 2013, Prevost made numerous visits to Ireland. It will be interest to see if he returns to the country, which this century has turned radically secular, as Leo XIV.

Remembering CUA library donor John K. Mullen of Galway

John Kernan Mullen of Ballinasloe, County Galway, helped to fund the Catholic University of America (CUA) library that bears his name. The cornerstone was laid April 25, 1925, on the Washington, D.C., campus.

Mullen emigrated to America in 1847, when he was nine. “He began working in a flour mill in Oriskany Falls, N.Y.,” according to a CUA profile. “At 20, Mullen went West, leasing a flour mill in Denver, Colo., and soon after buying several more mills. By 1911 he had built the first grain elevator in the state, established the Colorado Milling and Elevator Company, and operated 91 elevators, warehouses and mills in Colorado, Kansas, Utah and Oregon.”

He became a millionaire.

In 1924, Mullen pledged $500,000 to CUA to build a library, which opened as the John K. Mullen of Denver Memorial Library in September 1928. Since then the library has been open to the public. My work has benefited from access to the Mullen Library and CUA’s Special Collections, which are held in a different building. See the library’s online centenary exhibition.

There is no doubt of Mullen’s business success and generous philanthropy, especially to the Catholic church. He might have been motivated by having escaped the Great Famine.

His political views about Ireland’s struggle for independence are more of a mystery. He surely knew that Rev. Thomas J. Shahan, CUA’s rector from 1909 to 1928, had been an ardent Irish nationalist and national vice president of the Friends of Irish Freedom during the country’s revolutionary years. Exiled Fenian John Devoy attended the 1925 cornerstone ceremony. Coverage of the event in his Gaelic American newspaper mentioned only Mullen’s financial gift.[1]”Cardinal Lays Cornerstone Of Library, Gaelic American, May 2, 1925.

Mullen died in August 1929 in Denver. US Catholic newspapers and secular press obituaries also were silent as to Mullen’s views about his homeland. The digital Irish Newspaper Archive contains no coverage of his death or funding the library.

Bust of John K. Mullen on the main stairway landing between the library’s lobby and second floor.

This plaque is located inside the library’s front door.

References

References
↑1 ”Cardinal Lays Cornerstone Of Library, Gaelic American, May 2, 1925.

Following US correspondents in Ireland, Part 3

My April 4-14 trip to Ireland allowed me to explore several places visited by American journalists in their late 19th or early 20th century travels to the country. Below are a few more of my travel photos of these places, plus some of the correspondents’ original reporting and my work about them. This is the last post of this series. MH

My travel to County Donegal allowed me not only to follow the 1888 journey of American correspondent William Henry Hurlbert  (See Part 1), but also three other US journalists who trekked to Dungloe during Ireland’s revolutionary period. Ruth Russell of the Chicago Daily News, 1919; Savel Zimand of Survey Graphic magazine, 1921; and Redfern Mason of the San Francisco Examiner, 1922, came to interview Patrick Gallagher, leader of the successful Templecrone Co-operative Agricultural Society Ltd. See “When three American journalists visited ‘Paddy the Cope’ in Dungloe, 1919-1922,” published earlier this year in The Irish Story.

Dunleavy, Holan, McGarvey, and Sharkey. 

“The Cope” today remains a thriving enterprise, with 12 retail businesses in four locations: Dungloe, Annagry, Kincasslagh, and Falcarragh. I was welcomed to Dungloe by Patrick J. Dunleavy, chairman of the Cope’s board of directors, who gave me a detailed driving tour of the Rosses region. Mark Sharkey, CEO; and Emma McGarvey, business support manager, hosted us for a lovey lunch at the Caisleain Oir Hotel, Annagry. Our wonderful meal came from award-winning chef Cathal Armstrong, who also owns Restaurant Eve in greater Washington, D.C. The warm hospitality of all these people matched the fine April weather. It was a highlight of my trip. Thank you.

***

“I arrived at Dungloe on a cold and rainy morning. And as the station is about three miles from the center of the village, I sent my luggage up by donkey cart and set out walking. Wild beauty was all around me. In ten minutes the rain stopped. The sky cleared and the wind freshened over the blue and golden hills.” — Savel Zimand, from  “The Romance of Templecrone”, Survey Graphic, November 26, 1921.

The Letterkenny and Burtonport railway extension opened in 1903 and closed in the 1940s. The Dungloe station has been converted into a private residence, seen at right from a small bridge over the former railroad right-of-way, at left, now used as a hike and bike trail.

“… If [Gallagher] had not been a co-operationist for Ireland he might have been a capitalist in America. He took me up the main street, making plain the signs of growing industry: the bacon cured in Dungloe, the egg-weighing, the rentable farm machinery. After viewing the orchard and beehives behind the cooperative store, I remarked on the size of the plant and its suitability for the purpose. — Ruth Russell, “Building The Commonwealth”, The Freeman, May 26, 1920. Magazine story based on 1919 reporting for the Chicago Daily News.

Early 20th century view, looking down Main Street in Dungloe.

Looking up Main Street, Dungloe, April 2025.

“[Gallagher] rises. ‘Come down to the harbor with me. I want to show you something.’ We stroll to the waterfront. From the rocks juts a pier on which men are working. ‘We have to thank America for that,’ says Gallagher.” — Redfern Mason, Rebel Ireland. Self-published booklet based on his 1922 reporting for the San Francisco Examiner.

These two storage buildings were erected as part of the cooperative in the early 20th century. They are located on the Dungloe waterfront, seen on the right at low tide. The pier related to this enterprise was erected in 1923 with funding from the American Committee for Relief in Ireland. The pier was destroyed by several storms in the 1990s. It has since been replaced, seen below at left.

Following US correspondents in Ireland, Part 2

My April 4-14 trip to Ireland allowed me to visit several places that American journalists wrote about during their late 19th or early 20th century travels to the country. Below are more of my travel photos, plus some of the correspondents’ original reporting and my work about them. MH

***

“It is seldom that reporters can sit in a hotel room and by peeping through drawn blinds see revolutionary history being made, as I am doing today and did yesterday.” — Arthur S. Draper of the New York Tribune, “Fierce Fighting Rages in Fire-Swept Dublin” in the Tribune, April 30, 1916 (Dateline April 29, 1916)

London & North Western Railway (LNWR) logo on the facade of the former hotel. Click image to enlarge.

“We watched the bombardment from a window on the third floor of a hotel. Naval boats, swinging in close to (the Liffey) shore, sent shells screaming into the city, bringing the rebel strongholds crashing down with loud roars. … Soldiers were posted in large force along the quays and in the warehouses across the street from our hotel, answering the sharp volleys of the sniping rebels.” — Wilbur S. Forrest of United Press, ”Shells Rout Rebels” in the Washington Post, April 30, 1916. (Dateline April 29, 1916)

Draper and Forrest were among the 14 correspondents embedded on a British naval destroyer that steamed for Dublin in April 1916 at the outbreak of the Rising. The the London and North Western Hotel is the lookout referenced in their stories. It was located on the Liffey riverfront next to the London and North Western Railway Company train station and steam packet terminal. After a long dormancy, the hotel property was reopened in 2022 as part of the Salesforce Tower campus, seen below. The station and terminal remains vacant.

Read “When a boatload of reporters steamed to the Easter Rising.”

The former London and North Western Hotel seen in April 2025. The red brick structure at left is part of the former railway and steam packet terminal, now abandoned. The dark glass at right is part of the Salesforce Tower, which incorporates the former hotel. The building faces the River Liffey across the street.

Looking upward to a rooftop skylight from the main stairwell of the former hotel lobby. I was unable to access the upper floors, where reporters watched the fighting in 1916.

Note stained glass designs at top of the arched windows, seen from the exterior.

West side of the former hotel. Note that a large arched window bricked over above the door.

Zoom presentation on Michael J. O’Brien

This event is concluded. I will make the recording available at a later date. MH

As historiographer of the American Irish Historical Society, County Cork-born Michael J. O’Brien focused on Irish contributions to colonial America. In 1919, as the Irish War of Independence heated up, he published A Hidden Phase of American History: Ireland’s Part in America’s Struggle for Liberty. The book was deployed to help make the case for why America should support Ireland’s struggle for liberty. When US Senator John Sharp Williams, a Mississippi Democrat, attacked the Irish in a widely reported speech, O’Brien was drafted to issue the reply.

My zoom presentation, “Michael J. O’Brien: Defending Ireland’s Record in America,” begins at 6 tonight, USA Eastern time. Thanks to the Irish American Heritage Museum, Albany, N.Y., which has stepped up to save this presentation after a new round of turmoil at AIHS. More about that in a future post.

Following US correspondents in Ireland, Part 1

My April 4-14 trip to Ireland allowed me to visit several places that American journalists wrote about during their late 19th or early 20th century travels to the country. Over the next few weeks I will publish some of my travel photos, plus links to the correspondent’s original reporting and my work about them. MH

***

“(Traveling into County Donegal we) entered upon great stone-strewn wastes of land seemingly unreclaimed and irreclaimable. Huge boulders lay tossed and tumbled about as if they had been whirled through the air by the cyclones of some prehistoric age, and dropped at random when the wild winds wearied of the fun. The last landmark we made out through the gathering storm was the pinnacled crest of Errigal. Of Dunlewy, esteemed the loveliest of the Donegal lakes, we could see little or nothing as we hurried along the highway, which follows its course down to the Clady, the river of Gweedore.” — William Henry Hurlbert, Ireland Under Coercion: The Diary of an American

Hurlbert was born in Charleston, South Carolina, educated at Harvard, and worked as a New York City newspaperman in the second half of the 19th century. He visited Ireland early in 1888 and published a book about his travels before the end of the year. Passages about his travels in County Donegal are found here on pages 77 to 124. My 2018 Ireland Under Coercion, Revisited serial placed his journey in historical context. I followed Hurlbert’s footsteps to Killone Abbey in County Clare in 2018.

The village of Dunlewy seen at the right side of the same-name lake in County Donegal. April 2025.

The Dungloe River at the edge of Dungloe town. April 2025

New(ish) Dublin museum focuses on Irish literature

DUBLIN–The Dublin Writers Museum opened in 1991 inside an 18th-century Georgian townhouse at 18 Parnell Square. It was dedicated to the county’s literary giants, including Samuel Beckett,  Brendan Behan, Brian Friel, Seamus Heaney, James Joyce, Patrick Kavanagh, George Bernard Shaw, Bram Stoker,  Jonathan Swift, Oscar Wilde, William Butler Yeats, and others. Sure, Trinity College on the south side of the Liffey held the globally famous Book of Kells, but DWM displayed Joyce’s typewriter, Beckett’s telephone, and Behan’s press credentials.

The COVID 19 pandemic closed the museum in March 2020. Even before then, complaints had begun to mount that it did not feature enough women authors or living writers. An assessment commissioned by Fáilte Ireland, the national tourism development agency, concluded later in 2020 that DWM “no longer meets the expectation of the contemporary museum visitor in terms of accessibility, presentation and interpretation.” It never reopened.

Plaque outside Newman House.

Simultaneously, discussions had been taking place since 2010 between the National Library of Ireland and University College Dublin for a creative alliance between their two unique assets – NLI’s Joyce collection and UCD’s historic Newman House property at 86 St. Stephen’s Green. Built in 1765 as a private residence, it was transformed in 1854 into the  Catholic University of Ireland , precursor of UCD, under the rectorship of John Henry Cardinal Newman. Joyce studied there from 1899 to 1902.

A panel in the new museum recalls the old museum.

In September 2019, Newman House opened as the Museum of Literature Ireland (or MoLI–after the Joyce character Molly Bloom. This was six months before COVID closed the DWM and the rest of Dublin. Now that it has survived the pandemic, MoLI features “dynamic, immersive exhibitions that tell the story of Ireland’s literary heritage from our earliest storytelling traditions to our celebrated contemporary writers.” One room of the new museum is dedicated to the DWM, including the artifacts mentioned above. Other materials that are not on display have become part of the MoLI’s archives.

In March, MoLI named David Cleary as its new director and CEO. He had been director of sales & operations at EPIC, The Irish Emigration Museum in Dublin’s Dockside district. MoLI receives government and private sector support.

In addition to its displays, MoLI offers a gift shop and cafe, including outdoor seating in a lovely courtyard. The courtyard provides access to Iveagh Gardens, described here as “among the finest, but least known, of Dublin’s parks and gardens.” Or, in the words of a popular Irish woman writer affixed to the entrance gate:

The gate between the Museum of Literature Ireland courtyard and the Iveagh Gardens.