Clúdach: Cover

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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 another of the university’s splendid Irish institutions—the Celtic Collection the Department of Special Collections in O’Shaughnessy-Frey Library. As with our previous cover, we look to the holdings of the Journal of the Kilkenny and South-east of Ireland Archaeological Society, a key publication in the history of Irish antiquarianism. The Celtic Collection holds a nearly complete run of this periodical. The cover presents a “chromo-lithograph” of an “Ancient Enamelled Bridle-Bit and Boss” found in Killeevan, County Monaghan, a few years earlier. The accompanying note in the Journal notes that the item was believed to be of special significance, as it was possibly the first such bronze and enamel work discovered that had a military, rather than an ecclesial, purpose. It appears in volume 1, 1856–57.

In addition to its strong holdings of archaeological and antiquarian titles, the Celtic Collection (comprising more than 9,200 volumes) also houses a collection of rare and first editions of twentieth-century Irish poetry. Prominent among these texts is the greater portion of the output of the Dolmen Press (a collection of more than 200 titles acquired from the estate of the late Liam Miller, the founder of the Dolmen Press), the Cuala Press, and the Raven Arts Press; works by Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney and Nobel nominee Austin Clarke; and a collection of early-twentieth-century nationalist poetry.

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.