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Format
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Jpg
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Title
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Edna O'Brien, DLitt honoris causa, 1991
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Identifier
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VHS0001
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Depiction
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A woman holding a parchment and a man holding a folder, both in academic dress, against a background of trees
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Description
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Edna O'Brien on July 1, 1991 , following conferral in UCG of the honorary degree DLitt on her by the NUI, on the proposal of UCG, with Professor Hubert McDermott, Department of English, who had delivered the citation contained in the folder in his hand. The photograph was taken in the President's garden behind the southwest corner of the Quadrangle.
This was the first honorary degree conferred on Edna O'Brien by any University. It was generally seen as overdue recognition of a writer whose controversial early novels in the 1960s, rooted in the religion-dominated Irish rural society of her girlhood, had been banned in Ireland. A photograph of her chatting on this occasion with the Bishop of Killaloe, Most Rev. Dr Michael Harty, who was Clare Co. Council's representative on the Governing Body at the time, was thus seen by many as reflecting the change in Irish society since that time. That belated sense of acceptance was echoed in Miriam Lord's report, following her interview of Edna after the conferral, under the headline 'Country Girl Goes Home', published in the Irish Independent of July 2, 1991.
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People
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Edna O'Brien and Hubert McDermott
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References
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Irish Independent, July 2, 1991
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event
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Conferral
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Bibliographic Citation
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H. McDermott, S. Mac Mathúna, 'Edna O'Brien, DLitt honoris causa, 1991', Visual History Retired Staff Collection, University of Galway Digital Collections, Asset Id 14314, Archival Record Id VHRS
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Text in image
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On the folder, the words
OLLSCOIL NA hÉIREANN
The National University of Ireland
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Period
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1990s
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Category
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Colour
Portrait
On-campus
Outdoors
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Language
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English
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Creator
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Ray Shanley
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Publisher
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University of Galway Library
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Rights
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This image may be used for non-commercial purposes under CC BY-NC-SA see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
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Provenance
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Image provided by Hubert McDermott to Séamus Mac Mathúna for the Visual History Retired Staff Collection in 2023 and scanned by Jackie Uí Chionna
