Clúdach: Cover

The University of St. Thomas has been home to New Hibernia Review and the Center for Irish Studies since our founding, and on the covers of this year’s volume we honor the university’s generous commitment to Irish Studies by sampling the rich resources of the university’s 9,200-volume Celtic Collection of the Department of Special Collections in O’Shaughnessy-Frey Library. Our covers this year present archaeological illustrations from rare books found there.

Here, we present an image found in The Journal of the Royal Historical and Archaeological Association of Ireland, which appeared more or less regularly under that name from 1870 to 1890. The Celtic Collection holds a nearly full run of this periodical. The cover presents a lithograph of gold and silver torques found near Inishowen, County Donegal, in 1882. The accompanying note in the Journal, from Robert Day, M.R.I.A, F.S.A, provides only slight information on the circumstances of the torques’ discovery. It appeared on pp. 182–85 of volume 6, series 4, 1883–84.

The Celtic Collection is one of the leading repositories of Irish rare books in North America, and it continues to purchase books and other materials that add to its strengths. Historically, the collection was founded on three significant donations from the Ancient Order of Hibernians (1917), the Peter O’Connor Family (1936), and the Foxley family gift of the Eamon O’Toole Library (1956). The collection documents the history, culture, and literature of the Celtic peoples (Irish, Scot, Welch, Manx, and Breton); approximately 85 percent of its holdings focus on Ireland. The collection is especially strong in its holdings of Irish local history and politics, folklore, modern Irish poetry, and Irish and Scots Gaelic language materials.

We thank the University of St Thomas Department of Special Collections, and especially director Ann M. Kenne and graduate student assistant Shannon Scott, for kind assistance in providing this and other cover images, and for help in preparing our cover notes.