This exhibition features some of the rare and beautiful national treasures held in Marsh’s Library (beside St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin), from the religious controversy of seventeenth century writers and the works of Catholic scholars in exile to more modern writers who actually read in Marsh’s.
The exhibition opens with two fourteenth-century Irish illuminated manuscripts: the Lives of the Irish Saints and an extraordinary manuscript in Irish on astronomy. The contemporary transcript of St Oliver Plunkett’s trial and the shabby evidence given by the friars against him are also displayed.
Also included are the works of Irish writers such as Tom Moore, who used to be locked inside the library in order to work after hours, James Clarence Mangan, who lived nearby, and Emily Lawless who left her papers to Marsh’s. Probably the strangest book is an Italian one of spurious twelfth-century prophesies. This intriguing work, full of weird illustrations, is the actual copy read by James Joyce in 1902. It made such a strong impression on him that he mentions it in Ulysses when he refers to ‘the stagnant bays in Marsh’ library’.
Jonathan Swift, another famous reader, is also well represented. Despite a deep hatred of Archbishop Marsh (‘no man would be either glad or sorry at his death except his successor’) it is thought that he wrote much of Gulliver’s Travels in his library. Included is an early edition, his death mask, the register from St Patrick’s showing the record of his burial and his copy of Clarendon’s History of the Rebellion which includes hand-written bitter remarks attacking the Scots for the part they played in it. Other curiosities include an early Irish treatise on dentistry suggesting the use of dog’s incisors for false teeth and the earliest maps of Ireland, including a superb one produced by Beaufort in the eighteenth century.
Opening hours: Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday: 10am–12.45 &2–5pm. Saturday: 10:30am–12:45. Tuesday and Sunday: closed.