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[Introduction: Aidan O'Hara] Bhfuel a chairde ana fáilte roimh, athas orm go tháinig sibh.
If you didn't come we'd be in deep trouble and very embarrassed at the same time but
we won't talk about that; these things happen.
Now to start off with a very regular attender at all Emmet functions over the years was
Tomás Mac Giolla, who sadly passed away recently. Tomás turned up no matter what practically
and May his wife, of course. The very last function we were at together was at the Unitarian
Church on St. Stephen's Green and afterwards at St Catherine's Church for the laying of
the wreath. He looked rather frail then and well he didn't make it this time. So a great
man and extraordinary figure; an amazing individual with great courage and great stamina in every
sense of that word.
Of course there with us also that time is again our great supporter and friend Philip
Emmet and his son Thomas who we are very happy to have here this evening. They have always
been very very kind to us in our effort to remember Emmet and what the Emmets and that
whole era, what it meant to us in history, understood and sometimes misunderstood, and
interpreted and misinterpreted in so many ways. We have learnt a great deal over the
commemoration for the two hundredth anniversary and since then, so many books have come out.
So you are very welcome to this the 8th Annual Emmet Spring lecuture, which is hosted by
the Emmet and Devlin Committee and Dublin City Public Libraries. Our speaker this evening
is Dr Máire Kennedy, Divisional Librarian with Dublin City Libraries in charge of special
collections, that's early printed books and manuscripts here at Dublin City Library & Archive.
Máire's own research is in the area of the 18th Century Irish book trade and her publications
include 'French Books in Eighteenth-century Ireland' published by Oxford University Press,
2001 and two chapters in 'The History of the Irish Book' Vol 3, in 'The Irish Book in English
1550 - 1800' again Oxford University Press, 2005. Máire is first and foremost a gracious
host to the treasure trove that is the special collections. She and her colleagues are always
ready to help with any query and assist the researcher in every way. We know this ourselves
from working in the past, here and there through the years and nothing ever seems too trivial
for them to deal with. She has been most helpful to us in the Emmet and Devlin Committee and
tolerant of our sometimes halting efforts in getting the talk series right and commemorating
the Emmet ideas. So I should like to take this opportunity Máire right at the start
to thank you and your colleagues for all your kindness to us.
The era of the Emmets, it seems to me, was
one when everyone was writing and pamphlets of all sorts were being turned out by the
hundreds and perhaps Máire you may refer to that aspect this in your talk this evening.
You have called it 'Rediscovering Emmet's Dublin through the Collections of Dublin City
Archives'and we are going to enjoy I'm sure. Ladies and gentlemen would please join me
in welcoming our speaker this evening, Dr Máire Kennedy.
[Dr Máire Kennedy] Thank you very much everybody. Now what I'm hoping to do this evening and
I hope you won't be disappointed is I'm hoping to look at our collections in the library,
but look at them in a different way. I'm hoping to look at them in order that they will through some
light on anybody who'd be hoping to do research on not just Robert Emmet or any of the other
Emmet family but on any aspect of that whole period of the late eighteenth-century and
early nineteenth-century. So I hope that will be of interest to you this evening.
Now I'm going to look at three different aspects of the collections this evening. One will
be the social life in late 18th century Dublin and then I will look at the Emmet family and
then finally at the political turmoil of the late 1790s and early 1800s. Now, needless
to say the collections that we have here in Dublin City Library & Archive are not
the whole sum of the collections for this period. Obviously, the National Library has
a wonderful collection; the National Archives has a wonderful collection, the Royal Irish
Academy and indeed the British Library and many other libraries. In some cases we'd be
duplicating what they have and in other cases we might all have unique items. So anybody who is researching this period
will find
that
they have to go to all of our libraries to see what sort of
information
we have.
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