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Review by Kevin Sullivan of the book My Brother’s Keeper: James Joyce’s Early Years by Stanislaus Joyce, brother of James Joyce.

This series contains McGrath’s collection of photocopies of James Joyce’s letters to his publisher Grant Richards and others.

Letter from Feargal McGrath, The Society of Jesus, 35 Lower Leeson Street, Dublin. Replying on behalf of Father M. A. O’Grady, The Society of Jesus, he informs Edward McGrath that it would be important to spend a few weeks in Dublin in order to interview people who knew Joyce. States that ‘the idea that there was a concerted move on the part of the Order (Jesuit) to get the book [Dubliners] suppressed is completely without foundation’. In reply to a question concerning the opinion of Irish Jesuits of Joyce, he notes that ‘some Jesuits think Joyce of great significance, in view of his undoubted influence on modern writing. Others think him greatly over-rated, and believe that the vogue for him will pass.’

Letter from George Harris Healy, curator, Department of Rare Books, Cornell University Library, Ithaca, New York. Informs McGrath that the Joyce Collection is catalogued, and though not available to the public, can be consulted by persons outside the university who are scholars or Joyce specialists.

Letter from Hugh Kenner, writer, critic and author of inter alia 'Dublin’s Joyce', 512 Hunter Street West, Peterborough, Ontario, Canada. In reply to a question posed by McGrath, Kenner suggest that Joyce’s talent was to some extent recognised or Dubliners would not have been accepted by the publishers in the first instance. States that he suspects that Joyce had ‘powerful ecclesiastical enemies in Dublin’ and that this may have had some bearing on why the there was a delay in the publication of Dubliners.

Letter from Marjorie G. Wynne, Librarian, Rare Book Room, Yale University Library, New Haven, Connecticut. Informs McGrath that he can view the Joyce Collection in the Library without special appointment. Also notes that Joyce material previously in the ownership of John Slocum is now the property of Yale University Library.

Letter from Oliver St. John Gogarty, Irish-American writer and surgeon, 45 East 61st Street, New York. Informs McGrath he could find his writings about Joyce in Mourning Became Mrs. Spendlove. Notes that in America he is ineligible to discuss Joyce because he happened to know him.

From Padraic Colum, poet and writer, 11 Edenvale Road, Ranelagh, Dublin 6, in which he praises McGrath’s Lament for Kincora, an article about Joyce. States that it is well written, knowledgeable about Irish history, and keen in the understanding of Joyce’s attitude to nationalism. Notes, however, that he should have ‘liked you to have noted Joyce’s virtuosity in the interpolations by which he giganticises the CYCLOPS episode’.

Letter from Stephen A. McCarthy, director of Cornell University Library, Ithaca, New York. Informs McGrath that their collection of Joyce material is in the process of sorting, arranging and cataloguing and therefore unavailable to users. Also notes that Cornell does not own the literary copyright to the material.

Letter from Vivien Mercier, 42-40 Bowne Street, Flushing 55, New York, in which he discusses Mrs. George Roberts who allegedly owned a copy of Lonely Antagonists by Maurice Joy, one of the second series of Tower Press Booklets, suppressed in 1998. He also states that Roberts was not responsible for the printer’s destruction of the Dubliners sheets which her husband had agreed to sell to Joyce.