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Special issue of The Arrow, a publication of the Abbey Theatre

The James Augustine Healy Collection, located in the John and Catherine Healy Memorial Room of Special Collections, is a collection of works from the Irish Literary Renaissance (1880-1940.) The collection was founded in 1948, when James Healy donated Cuala Press published volumes, greeting cards and broadsides. Since then the collection has grown to over 5000 books and periodicals. There are extensive collections of works by William Butler Yeats and James Joyce, containing rare volumes. Other Irish authors represented in the collection are John Millington Synge, James Stephens, George William Russell (AE,) Standish James O'Grady, George Moore, Douglas Hyde, Lady Gregory, Oliver St. John Gogarty, Oscar Wilde, and Bernard Shaw.

 

The collection is endowed and supports a growing collection of Irish writers who have come to prominence since 1945 such as Seamus Heaney, Patrick Kavanagh, Thomas Kinsella, and John Montague. Healy also gave the James Brendan Connolly (Irish-American) Collection of books and manuscripts to Colby.

The collection also sponsors the annual James Augustine Healy Prize, which brings a $100 award to the Colby student submitting the best essay on an Irish topic written in the current academic year. The winner essay is selected in April by two faculty judges. Essays need not be written for a particular class. For more information, contact Pat Burdick, Special Collections Librarian, at 859-5151 or paburdic@colby.edu.

Healy Biographical Sketch

Related links:

CELT: The Online Resource for Irish History, Literature, and Politics

The American Conference for Irish Studies -- The Healy Collection is a member

The Maine Irish Heritage Center (Portland) -- The Healy Collection is a member and newsletter sponsor