Bound hardback volume containing a typescript entitled My Memories, written by Julia Cecilia Harris née Ryan and dedicated to her children and grandchildren, together with a card identifying the names of the memoir’s donors and date of donation. The title page of the volume is dated 17 March 1926 while the last page is dated 19 March 1926. A footnote on p. 8 suggests that the writing of the original manuscript was under way by 1925. In addition, some pages were added as an afterthought in 1927 before the document was bound. Typing is uniform throughout the text, including a much later dedication of January 1945, which reads ‘To Arthur [Arthur James Littledale], from Mummie [Mary Josephine Littledale née Harris] With all my love’. The uniformity of the typescript suggests that the document was typed and bound post 1945. There is also a handwritten dedication on a page preceding the title page ‘For my darling Christopher [Tugendhat], from his devoted Mother, Máire [Tugendhat née Littledale], grand-daughter of the author of these memories. And for his descendants.’ This dedication is dated 29 March 1972 and it is likely that the original manuscript was typed and bound by Máire Tugendhat in that year. The memoir, which narrates Julia Harris’s life events in considerable detail, provides exceptional insights into the life of the prosperous Roman Catholic middle class in Ireland in the second half of the nineteenth century, Ireland’s status as part of the British Empire and the violent events which led to its emergence as an independent nation in the early twentieth century.

The material consists of correspondence, speeches, press cuttings, photographs and taped interviews relating to Frances Condell’s political career; typescripts and drafts of poems, articles, short stories and stories for children; genealogical material and photographs relating to the Eades family; and assorted recordings. Collection highlights include letters signed by President John F. Kennedy, Senator Edward Kennedy and Mrs Lyndon B. Johnson, and correspondence with the American poet Beverley Githens Dresbach (1903-1971).

Last page of a letter from James Butler, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Cashel to an unidentified group of gentlemen, urging them to exercise their vigilance and diligence 'to extirpate vice, & plant virtue & good morels [sic] that they may gain the Celestial Reward'. The missive incorporates a letter from Ellicebeth Swift addressed 'to all & every Clergymen [sic] in Care of souls within the Dioceses of Cashel & Emly', accusing them of ill treatment and threatening to make them 'dance & gallop in sich [sic] a manner that the Munster Lass in her Prime would not catch you till you pass the post at Mitchelstown' if they do not mend their ways. The letter constitutes a rare and useful account of relations between clergymen and parishioners within the Catholic Church in the archdiocese of Cashel and Emly from the female perspective.