Edna O'Brien, DLitt honoris causa, 1991
Item
Format
Jpg
Title
Edna O'Brien, DLitt honoris causa, 1991
Identifier
VHS0001
Depiction
A woman holding a parchment and a man holding a folder, both in academic dress, against a background of trees
Description
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.
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.
People
Edna O'Brien and Hubert McDermott
References
Irish Independent, July 2, 1991
Contributor
event
Conferral
Bibliographic Citation
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
Text in image
On the folder, the words
OLLSCOIL NA hÉIREANN
The National University of Ireland
OLLSCOIL NA hÉIREANN
The National University of Ireland
Spatial Coverage
Temporal Coverage
Period
1990s
Category
Colour
Portrait
On-campus
Outdoors
Portrait
On-campus
Outdoors
Subject
Language
English
Creator
Ray Shanley
Publisher
University of Galway Library
Rights
This image may be used for non-commercial purposes under CC BY-NC-SA see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
Provenance
Image provided by Hubert McDermott to Séamus Mac Mathúna for the Visual History Retired Staff Collection in 2023 and scanned by Jackie Uí Chionna