A Journey to the Seven Boxes: An Exploration of the Benedict Kiely Papers in the National Library of Ireland (Critical Essay‪)‬

As a writer and librarian who has worked for many years in the Manuscript Department of the National Library of Ireland, observing the acquisition of literary collections by the National Library and other institutions, I have often asked myself: how useful are such manuscripts? Obviously ancient and medieval manuscripts, or manuscripts emanating from a society where access to the printing press was limited (such as Gaelic Ireland until the end of the nineteenth century), are of the greatest importance. Similarly, a writer's correspondence, personal diaries, and unpublished manuscripts are of undisputed value to literary historians and biographers. But many modern literary manuscript collections contain little enough such material, and instead largely comprise drafts and proofs of literary works which are published and available in printed form. So do we really need the manuscripts? Librarians, archivists, auctioneers, and indeed authors, have two answers. The first is that manuscripts of great writers have an iconic value of their own. Not necessarily, indeed, rarely, beautiful objects in themselves, these manuscripts have a cultural value which is not unrelated to the kind associated with pictures or other works of visual art. They are simply precious, in a way which is unquantifiable and difficult to define. But without any doubt the thrill we all get from seeing an original manuscript version of 'The Lake Isle of Innisfree,' or Ulysses, or Pride and Prejudice is genuine. The manuscript seems to bring us closer, spiritually and physically, to its author. Although intellectually we, as readers, know, that there is no way of coming closer to an author's mind than by reading his/her books, only someone with a heart of stone is impervious to the emotion engendered by the sight of the author's own hand, the paper s/he wrote upon. Many visitors to the Yeats Exhibition at the National Library say that one of their favourite items in that exhibition is the manuscript, a fair copy actually, of Yeats's 'The Stolen Child': the beloved poem, in the hand of the beloved poet. This is an emotional rather than a scholarly reaction but it is one of the most significant reasons for acquiring, keeping, and displaying literary manuscripts.