William T. O'Malley - Francis Stuart Collection circa 1933-1995 MS.1996.010 http://hdl.handle.net/2345/2798
Archives and Manuscripts Department John J. Burns Library Boston College 140 Commonwealth Avenue Chestnut Hill 02467 [email protected] URL: http://www.bc.edu/burns Table of Contents
Summary Information ...... 3 Administrative Information ...... 4 Biographical note ...... 5 Scope and Contents ...... 6 Arrangement ...... 6 Collection Inventory ...... 7 I: Correspondence ...... 7 II: Manuscripts ...... 7 III: Portraits of Francis Stuart ...... 7 IV: Newspaper articles ...... 7
William T. O'Malley - Francis Stuart Collection MS.1996.010
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Creator: Stuart, Francis Title: William T. O'Malley - Francis Stuart collection Collection Identifier: MS.1996.010 Date [inclusive]: circa 1933-1995 Physical Description 0.25 Linear Feet (1 box) Language of the English Material: Abstract: Collection of materials relating to Irish poet and novelist Francis Stuart including correspondence, manuscripts, portraits, and newspaper articles. Preferred Citation
Identification of item, Box number, Folder number, William T. O'Malley - Francis Stuart collection, MS.1996.010, John J. Burns Library, Boston College.
William T. O'Malley - Francis Stuart Collection MS.1996.010
- Page 3 - Administrative Information
Publication Information Processed by Corban Rhodes in Summer 2001. This finding aid was produced using ArchivesSpace.
Restrictions on access Collection is open for research.
Restrictions on use These materials are made available for use in research, teaching and private study, pursuant to U.S. Copyright Law. The user must assume full responsibility for any use of the materials, including but not limited to, infringement of copyright and publication rights of reproduced materials. Any materials used for academic research or otherwise should be fully credited with the source. The original authors may retain copyright to the materials.
William T. O'Malley - Francis Stuart Collection MS.1996.010
- Page 4 - Biographical note
Henry Francis Montgomery Stuart, the son of a prosperous sheep rancher originally from County Antrim, Ireland, was born on April 29, 1902, in Townsville, Australia. Less than a year later, following the death of his father, he was brought to Meath, Ireland, where he lived with relatives. Stuart was educated at various preparatory schools in England; the last was Rugby, which he left in 1918 without graduating. In 1920, at age eighteen, he married Iseult Gonne, daughter of Irish nationalist Maud Gonne. During the Irish civil war, Stuart fought with the Republicans along side de Valera. In August 1922 he was captured by Free State troops and held in Maryborough Prison and later in the Curragh compound until his release in November 1923.
Stuart published his first book, a privately printed collection of poems called We Have Kept the Faith, the following year. He did not publish very much poetry after this, but instead concentrated on writing fiction. His first novel,Women and God (1931) was a critical failure, but his next two books,Pigeon Irish (1932) and The Coloured Dome(1932), were well received. He was encouraged in his early years as a writer by W.B. Yeats. His novels all followed similar themes of protagonists who live sheltered, safe lives but were distraught by pain and suffering, leaving them outcast and yet somehow more aware of themselves. From 1933 through 1940, he published eight more novels and had two plays produced at the Abbey theater.
In 1940, troubled by a declining career as well as by lingering financial and marital problems, Stuart accepted a position as lecturer in English and Irish at the University of Berlin, where he stayed, except for some months in Luxembourg, for the duration of World War II. In November 1945, after the war in Europe ended, he was arrested by French occupation forces and imprisoned first in Bregenz and later in Freiburg until July 1946. Though no formal charges were brought against him, he was detained presumably because of a series of weekly radio broadcasts he had made to Ireland from 1942 to 1944, in which he took a pro-Nazi perspective on world events. After his release, he lived in Freiburg until 1949 when he moved to Paris. In 1951 he went to London, where he lived for seven years. In 1954, following the death of his wife, who had remained in Ireland, he married Gertrud Meissner, whom he had met at the University of Berlin. He returned to Ireland in 1958 and lived near Dunshaughlin in County Meath before moving to the Windy Arbour section of Dublin in 1971.
Stuart's first two postwar novels, The Pillar of Cloud (1948) and Redemption (1949) deal with a lot of the same issues that he went through during the war. They marked a new era of his work in which he could speak first hand of the pain and suffering that he had hitherto written about. From 1950 to 1959, Stuart published six more novels. Then in 1971, after twelve unpublished years, he produced Black List, Section H, a closely autobiographical novel that received much acclaim.
In 1981, Stuart was inducted into Aosdána, his first significant public recognition in Ireland since he had been invited to join Yeats's Irish Academy of Letters in 1932. Aosdána was a body of about 150 elite artists in Ireland, whose endeavors were supported by government funds. He was eventually given the position of Saoi, the highest honor which the arts body can bestow on an artist. The poet Maire Mac an tSaoi tried to have him thrown out of Aosdana because of his alleged collusion with the Nazis. Francis Stuart died on Feb. 2, 2000 at his home in County Clare.
William T. O'Malley - Francis Stuart Collection MS.1996.010
- Page 5 - Sources:
Inventing Ireland: The Literature of a Modern Nation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).
The Dictionary of Irish Literature edited by Robert Hogan (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996): pp.535-539.
Scope and Contents
This collection contains four letters, one of which was written by Francis Stuart; the other three are correspondence between others about Stuart. Also included are poems by Stuart, portraits, and a newspaper with an article about him.
Arrangement
Organized into four series: I: Correspondence; II: Manuscripts; III: Portraits; and IV: Newspaper articles.
William T. O'Malley - Francis Stuart Collection MS.1996.010
- Page 6 - Collection Inventory
Series I: Correspondence, 1933-1995
Francis Stuart to Mrs. Kurath, 1933 July 13 box 1 folder 2
William Vorm to O'Malley, 1978 January 14 box 1 folder 1
Gigi Meader, 1977 November 16 box 1 folder 1
Notecards, 1978 box 1 folder 1
Maureen ___ to O'Malley, 1995 December 22 box 1 folder 3
Series II: Manuscripts, undated, 1994
"The Hawk", undated box 1 folder 4
"The Trees in the Square", undated box 1 folder 5
"The Consumer", 1994 box 1 folder 6
"As a Species", 1994 box 1 folder 6
Christmas card with poem, undated box 1 folder 7
Series III: Portraits of Francis Stuart, box 1 folder 8-9 undated, 1987
Series IV: Newspaper articles, 1995
The Observer Review - Article on Francis Stuart on p.12, 1995 box 1 folder 10 May 28
William T. O'Malley - Francis Stuart Collection MS.1996.010
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