Pearse Hutchinson

Title

Pearse Hutchinson

Description

The archive reflects both Hutchinson's career and literary output, and his personal and family life in an assortment of documents. The collection is currently being arranged along these categories. It includes the Hutchinson family papers, concerning his parents, Henry Warren Hutchinson and Caitlín McElhinney and consists of letters, photographs and printed material, relating to their involvement with Sinn Féin and the republican cause in Glasgow in the early 20th century. The family papers also include documents relating to Hutchinson's childhood, including notebooks and drawings and a large collection of photographs.

Hutchinson literary papers make up the core of the collection. These papers include drafts of both published and unpublished poems, scripts for Hutchinson's radio show, reviews, correspondence and Tagairt, Hutchinson's weekly column in the RTÉ guide, which ran for 27 years from 1976 to 2003. In addition, the collection also contains a large assortment of ephemera relating to arts and cultural events in Ireland and Spain including posters, flyers, programmes and booklets.

Documents of interest include papers relating to Henry and Caitlín Hutchison's involvement with Irish republicanism, including letters from Eamon De Valera, Sinéad De Valera, Countess Markievicz and Margaret Pearse and letters from Henry to Caitlín during his internment in Mountjoy prison.

Among Hutchinson's own papers items of note include correspondence from international writers including Saul Bellow (American), Octavio Paz (Mexican), Salvador Espriu (Catalan), Joseph Carner (Catalan) and Toni Turull (Catalan). He also corresponded with his contempories in Ireland and the UK, and the collection includes letters from Sean O'Riordáin, Caitlin Maude, Brendan Behan, Mairtín O'Direain, Gabriel Rosenstock, Máire Mhac an tSaoi, Paul Durcan, John Jordan, Michael Hartnett, Seamus Heaney and P.J. Kavanagh.

In addition to a large collection of unpublished poems the collection also contains early draft of some of Hutchinson's well know published works including from, Tongue without Hands (1963), Expansions (1969) and Watching the Morning Grow (1972). The collection also contains the original script for Hutchinson's weekly radio show Óró Domhnaigh, which ran from 1977 to 1978 on RTÉ, together with some of his original research for the broadcast. As all but one of the original broadcasts are now lost, these scripts are a unique record of the eclectic show about Irish arts and culture, which was extensively researched and written by Hutchinson.

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