Joseph Hassett Collection

Joseph Hassett

UCD Library Special Collections holds Joseph Hassett's collection of Irish poetry.

The Collection

• This is a significant collection of Irish poetry of the 20th and 21st centuries, deposited in UCD in 2013 through the generosity of prominent Irish American lawyer and Yeats scholar, Joseph Hassett, via the American Ireland Fund.
• It consists of W.B. Yeats first editions spanning his whole career, many of which are signed, and several important manuscripts relating to the women from whom Yeats drew inspiration.
• This collection contains an example of the extremely rare Easter, 1916.
• The Joseph Hassett Collection also includes a range of contemporary Irish poetry by important Irish Poets, including collections from Peter Sirr, Eavan Boland, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Michael Longley, Dennis O’Driscoll, and Maeve McGuckian among many others.
• Works of literary criticism relating to Yeats donated by Joseph Hassett form part of UCD’s general collection.

Collection Highlights

• Easter, 1916 (No. 4 of only twenty-five copies in a private publication by Clement Shorter)
• Printers proof of Against Witchcraft with changes in Yeats’s hand
• Handwritten letter to Florence Emery from W.B. Yeats
• The Trembling of the Veil inscribed to Olivia Shakespear from ‘her oldest friend’ (Yeats)
• Theatre programme signed by George Bernard Shaw and Lady Augusta Gregory
• The Green Helmet signed by Yeats
• In The Seven Woods signed by Yeats
• The Wild Swans at Coole signed by Yeats

Access and Use

The collections can be consulted by the students and staff of UCD, and by external users, in the Special Collections Reading Room.

More Information