George [Æ]
Russell (1867-1935)
Life
1867: George William Russell [alias
Æ [AE], from Aeon; occas.
err. A.E.], b. 10 April, Lurgan, Co Armagh; son of Marianne
[var. Mary; née Armstrong] and Thos. Elias Russell, William
St., Lurgan, a book-keeper [viz., accountant] who joined Robert
Gardners business of chartered accountants in Dame St. Dublin,
1878 [va. job at brewery]; settled at 33 Emorville Ave., Dublin;
became day-pupil at Dublin Metropolitan School of Art, 1880; at
16, he found that intense imaginations of another world, of
an interior nature overcame him walking on Armagh country
roads where he holidayed with an aunt; enrolled at Dr. C. W. Bensons
Rathmines School, 1882; night-pupil at Metropolitan to July 1885,
and there met Yeats [WBY] and theosophist Charles Johnston; suffered
death of his sister Mary Elizabeth, 13 Oct. 1884 [one year older
than he]; family moves to 67 Grosvenor Sq., Dublin; evening classes
at Royal Hibernian Academy School; introduced to Katharine Tynan
by WBY, 11 Dec. 1887; letter to Lucifer (15 Dec. 1888), and
reply to editor [H. P. Blavatsky's] notes' in response, (15
Jan. 1889); appt. clerk at Pimms drapers at £40 p.a., and
felt outraged at offer of clerkship in Guinness; joined Theosophical
Society as probationer, 9 Dec. 1890 [signed by Madame Blavatsky];
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1891: resides at Theosophical Household
(The Lodge, Ely Place), 1891-97, home of Frederick and Annie Dick;
contribs. to Irish Theosophist, 1892; family moves to 5 Seapoint
Tce., May-June 1892; writes To the Fellows of the Theosophical
Society (26 March 1894); issues Homeward Songs by the Way
(June 1894), noticed by WBY with comments to the effect that the
poets were uttering, under the mask of phantasy, the old revelations
... (Bookman, VI; Aug. 1894, pp.147-48); joins Irish
Literary Society, 1895; issues The Future of Ireland and the
Awakening of Fires (1897); contribs. issues Ideals in Ireland:
Priest or Hero (?May 1897); issues Earth Breath and Other
Poems (Sept. 1897); receives dedication of WBYs The
Secret Rose (1897); Marianne Russell d. 9 Oct. 1897; resigns
from Pims (having reached a salary of £60 p.a.), 3 Nov. 1897,
and interviewed by Horace Plunkett, 11 Nov. 1897, and appt. banks
organiser in IAOS, establishing farmers credit unions in west
of Ireland; quits Theosophical Society, then led by Mrs Katherine
Tingley; m. Violet North, 9 June 1898, John Hughes acting as best
man with A. W. Dwyer; settles at 10 Grove Terrace, Rathmines; his
father moving to Hillsborough, Blackrock; moves to 28 Upr. Mount
Pleasant Ave., 2 Nov. 1898; issues Co-operative Credit (1897);
a son born Feb. 1899, and dies in infancy; AE professed legend to
be more potent than history (Nationality and Cosmopolitan
Art, 1899); contrib. title [but not introductory] essay to Literary
Ideals in Ireland, ed. John Eglinton (1899); |
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1900: another son Brian Hartley, b.
1900; moves to 25 Coulston Ave., Rathgar; death of T. E. Russell,
31 Oct. 1900; issues An Artist of Gaelic Ireland (1897);
elected nominal president of Irish National Theatre at its foundation,
though immediately superceded by WBY, and thenceforth vice-president
with Douglas Hyde and Maud Gonne, 1902; his play Deirdre
performed by the W. G. Fays Irish National Dramatic Company
at St Teresas Assoc. Abstinence Hall, 2-4 April 1902 (along
with WBYs Kathleen Ni Houlihan), having been written
as a corrective to the purportedly anti-heroic tendency of the Yeats
& Moore play Diarmuid and Grania (1901), earlier impugned
by S. J. O'Grady; invites James Joyce to visit him at Garville Ave.,
evening of Monday 18 Aug. 1902; a second son, Diarmuid Conor, b.
17 Nov. 1902; appt. by IAOS with T. P. Gill, J. R. Campbell to resolve
relations with Dept. of Agriculture and Technical Instruction, 4
July 1903; issues The Nuts of Knowledge (1903), poems; Deirdre:
A Drama in Three Acts (publ. 1903); introduced by Stephen Gwynn
to Sir Frederick Macmillan; offers Macmillan The Divine Vision
and option on all later poems; issues The Divine Vision and Other
Poems (Jan. 1904); resigns vice-presidency of Irish Literary
Theatre, July 1904; invites James Joyce to writing something simple,
rural?, live-making?, pathos? [pathetic] [sic] which would
not shock the readers; Ellmann, James Joyce, 1965 Edn., p.169;
1982, p.163]; exhibs. pictures, 23 Aug.-3 Sept. 1904; joins 2nd
Dublin Lodge of Theosophical Society, with Col. H. S. Olcott as
President, meeting at 34 Wicklow St. to 25 March, 1904; edits New
Songs (March 1904); issues Controversy in Ireland (Sept. 1904);
ed. New Songs (1904) with poems by Padraic
Colum, Alice Milligan, Susan Mitchell,
Seumas OSullivan, and several others - but not James Joyce; |
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1905: issues The Mask of Apollo
(6 Jan. 1905); succeeding H. F. Norman as ed. of Irish Homestead,
Aug. 1905-23, succeeding H. F. Norman, with premises in S. Frederick
St.; issues Some Irish Essays (22 Jan. 1906); moves to 17
Rathgar Ave., early 1906; issues By Still Waters (14 Dec.
1906); issues The Hero in Man (May 1909); Dublin Lodge secedes
when Mrs Annie Besant assumes presidency of Theosophical Soc. (Aydar),
and forms Dublin Hermetic Society, 1909, with Russell as president;
issues The Building up of a Rural Civilisation (1910); issues
The Renewal of Youth (1911); Third Home Rule Bill introduced, Westminster,
11 April 1912; embraced anarchist-cooperationist theories of Kroptokin,
1912; issues Co-Operation and Nationality (1912), written
with Sophie Bryant; transfers all his poetry rights from Macmillan
to Bodley Head [J. Lane & T. B. Mosher], May 1913; issues The
Rural Community (1919); spends June at Breaghy, Co. Donegal,
arranging Collected Poems (23 Sept. 1913); speaks out against
owners in the Great Lockout Strike in Open Letter to the Masters
of Dublin (The Irish Times, 7 Oct. 1913); also The
Tragedy of Labour in Dublin (Nov. 1913) and The Dublin
Strike (Nov. 1913); Industrial Peace Commission established
by AE and others, later renamed Civic League; speaks
with G. B. Shaw, Sylvia Pankhurst, and others at Albert Hall mass
meeting in support of Dublin Workers, 1 Nov. 1913; S. L. Gwynn dissociates
himself in Freemans Journal from press attacks on Shaw
and Russell (5 Nov. 1913); Russell issues Oxford University
and the Co-operative Movement (June 1914); his Open
Letter rep. in James Connollys Reconquest of Ireland
(1915), where he is called the great and magnetic personality
who introduced the idea of co-operatives; |
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1915: issues Ireland, Agriculture
and the War (?Feb. 1915); issues Gods of War with Other
Poems (Sept. 1915); issues Imaginations and Reveries
(3 Dec. 1915); issued Talks with Farmers, I-XII (Jan.-Sept.
1916); is staying in Raheen, Tuamgraney, Co. Clare as guest of Edward
Lysaght when 1916 Rising breaks out; returns to Dublin, 26-27 April;
issues The National Being (?Sept. 1916), celebrating Irishness
-chiefly rural - as manifold, intricate, of many dimensions
(The Living Torch, 1937, p.191) ; commemorates 1916 leaders
in Salutation, Jan. 1917; with James Douglas and Col.
Maurice Moore, circulated constitutional proposals embodying compromise
and supposed to reflect majority opinion though scornful of Ulster
Unionism, March 1917; contribs. first of three-installment essay
entitled Thoughts for a Convention in The Irish Times
(26 May, 1917), afterwards publ. as pamphlet; participates in inaugural
meeting of Irish Home Rule Convention at which Plunkett is elected
Chairman, Regent House, TCD, 25 July 1914; issued Thoughts
for a Convention (June 1917); co-opted to Grand Committee
to estab. procedural method, 25 Sept. 1917; meets with others of
the Committee of Nine to find basis for agreement, 25 Sept. 1917-5
April 1918; resigns from the Irish Convention, 1 Feb. 1918, finding
its constitution incompatable with honest debate and settlement;
contrib. Conscription for Ireland, in Manchester
Guardian (10 May 1918), warning that Conscription would instigate
resistance from the Irish, who considered themselves a subject people,
and imperil the empire; issued The Candle of Vision (22 Oct.
1918); issued Literary Imagination (1919); also Michael
(Dec. 1919); issued pamphlets A Plea for Justice (Dec.
1920), pamph.; issued The Economics of Ireland (1920),
Thoughts for British Co-operators (May 1921); The
Inner and the Outer Ireland (July 1921), and Ireland
and the Empire at the Court of Conscience (?Sept. 1921); issued
Ireland, Past and Future (?April 1922); |
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1922: refuses offered senatorship of
Free State, 1922; issues The Interpreters (Nov. 1922); opposes
Republican die-hards in Open Letter to the Irish Republicans
(Irish Times, 29 Dec. 1922); Brian Hartley Russell emigs.
to Australia, 1922; estab. The Irish Statesman (15 Sept.
1923-12 April 1930), on funds guaranteed by friends of Horace Plunkett,
merging it with the Irish Homestead; ed. by Russell with
J[ames] W. Good and Susan L. Mitchell acting as asst. editors, being
the only Irish journal of the era to offer political and cultural
analysis over a sustained period; offered and refused a seat in
the Senate (Dáil Eireann); early coverage incl. criticism
of Irish Republicanism after Civil War and commentary on the republican
Hunger Strike, 1923; death of his early friend Claude Falls Wright,
by drowning in Lake Nicaragua, 8 Jan. 1923; issues Voices
of Stone (5 June 1925); Susan Mitchel dies, 4 March 1926;
succeeded as asst. editor by Diarmuid Russell (£100 p.a.),
1926, assisted from May 1929 by Miss Irene Haugh; visits Paris with
C. P. Curran, and received there by Mme Simone Téry and himself
hosts James Stephens, Sept. 1926; Frederick J. Dick d. at Point
Loma, California, 25 May 1927; sails for America to seek support
for Irish Statesman, 14 Jan., arriving 25 Jan. 1928; AE
returns to Ireland, end of March; travels again to America, arriving
New York, 18 June 1928; issues Midsummer Eve (June 1926);
receives DLItt (Yale Univ.), 20 June 1928; Irish Statesman
incurs legal costs of £2,500 arising from suit of Seamus Clandillon
and his wife occasioned by Donal OSullivans review of
their songbook Londubh an Chairn in the Statesman
(19 Nov. 1927), the High Court jury having fails to agree. 13 Nov.
1928; makes public appeal to defray costs; 27] attacked Dáil
Eireann Censorship Bill in The Censorship in Ireland
(The Nation and Athenaeum, 22 Dec. 1928, pp.435-36); |
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1929: Diarmuid Russell moves to America,
May 1929; received DLitt from TCD, 2 July 1929; American guarantors
withdraw support and Irish Statesman closes in wake of Wall
Street Crash; issues Dark Weeping (9 Oct. 1929); last
issue of Irish Statesman, 12 April 1930; Oliver St. John
Gogarty, J. M. Hone and others circulate private appeal for financial
presentation to Russell as token of public esteem, summer 1930;
presented with cheque for £800 by James McNeill, Governor
of the Free State, 3 Sept. 1920; issues Enchantment and Other
Poems (Dec. 1930); travels to USA to lecture on rural reconstruction,
hoping to raise money for his wifes medical expenses, arrriving
at NY on Cedric, 23 Sept. 1930; issues Vale and Other
Poems (3 March 1931); visits London and George Moore, mid-1931;
contribs. a review in Observer for Humbert Wolfe [ed.,] (12
July 1931); suffered the death of his wife Violet, 3 Feb. 1932;
issues Song and Its Fountains (16 Feb. 1932); issues Verses
for Friends (Dec. 1932); Æ travels alone to
Euston Hotel, London, for a week afterwards; Horace Plunkett d.
26 March 1932; shaken by Catholic triumphalism the the Eucharistic
Congress, 1932; sells 17 Rathgar Ave., and gives away most of his
possessions; plans world tour; travels to Donegal to stay with Arthur
and Lucy Kingsley Porter in Donegal only to find that Arthur had
died by drowning that day, 8 July, 1933; leaves Ireland and settles
at 41 Sussex Gdns., London, arranged by Charles Weekes (who invited
him to stay); holidays in Donegal, May-July, 1933; returns to Dublin,
31 July and reaches London, 9 Aug. 1933; invited to America as guest
of Mrs. Mary Harriman Rumsey, President Roosevelts adviser
to the National Emergency Council, with request to lecture on the
use of unemployed young people on projects; sails on board Aurania,
13 Dec.; Mrs Rumsey d., 18 Dec.; reaches New York, 27 Dec.; issued
The Avatars (3 Oct. 1933); issues The House of Titans
and Other Poems (1934); |
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1935: lecturing tour of America arranged
by M. L. Wilson, H. A. Wallace (Sec. for Agriculture) and Judge
Richard Campbell; returns early in ill-health, 1 March 1935; arrives
in London, moving to 14 Tavistock Place, 16 March 1935; signs last
will, 14 June, bequeathing all to his second son; moves to Havenhurst
nursing home, Bournemouth; undergoes abdominal operation for cancer,
Stagsden Nursing Home, Bournemouth, 10 July 1935; visited by C.
P. Curran with messages from Dublin friends, 16 July 1935; awarded
Gregory Medal by Irish Academy of Letters; visited by Con Curran
and Oliver St. John Gogarty (by plane), 17 July; receives affectionate
message from WBY, solicited by Curran and Pamela Travers, d. 17
July 1935; with Curran, Weekes, Gogarty and W. K. Magee [John Eglinton]
at his bedside; coffin escorted to Holyhead by James Stephens, Helen
Waddell and others; Dublin funeral in form of modified Anglican
service; attended by Eamon de Valera (Pres. of Ireland), W. T. Cosgave,
WBY, and others; oration delivered by Frank OConnor for Irish
Academy of Letters, WBY having declined because he would have
to speak the truth (acc. OConnor); bur. Mt. Jerome,
Co. Dublin, following a mile long procession, 19 July; Selected
Poems (17 Sept. 1935); Russell appears in a novel by Stephen
Gwynn (The Old Knowledge, 1901) and James Stephen (The Crock
of Gold and The Charwoman's Daughter); there is an oil
portrait by John B. Yeats (1903) in the National Gallery of Ireland,
along with another by Nigel Newton; Hilda Roberts spirited
portrait is held in the Ulster Museum, Belfast; a commemorative
plaque was placed at 17 Rathgar Ave. in 1965; his second son Diarmuid
became his literary executor; a memorial prize was established for
meritorious or scholarly work native Irish writers under 35, published
or in manuscript, in Oct. 1939. PI NCBE DIB DIW DIH OCEL KUN
ODNB FDA MCA HAM APPL DUB OCEL OCIL |
See also pages on Russell at The Theosophical Society (Pasadena) > Theosophical Wiki - online; accessed 25.10.2020. |
[ top ]
Works
Poetry |
-
Homeward Songs by the Way (Dublin: Whaley
1894), 51pp., 16cm. [sign. AE; US ed. 1895];
- The Earth Breath and Other Poems (NY & London: John
Lane 1896 [PI 1897]);
- The Nuts of Knowledge: Lyric Poems Old and New by AE
(Dublin: Dun Emer Press 1903) - [Finished on the tenth day
of October, in the year Nineteen Hundred & Three.];
- The Divine Vision and Other Poems (London: Macmillan;
NY: Macmillan 1904) [different type and pag.];
- By Still Waters: Lyric Poems Old and New by AE
(Dublin: Dun Emer Press 1906) [ltd. edn. 200; Finished on
All Souls Eve , in the year 1906.];
- Deirdre (Dublin: Maunsel 1907);
- Collected Poems by A.E. (London: Macmillan
1913) and Do. [rep. edn.] (London: Macmillan 1920), xv,
275pp., 8°; facs. rep. as Collected Poems of AE by
George William Russell [1913] (USA: Wildside Press 2018), 204pp.-
contents list available online;
accessed 25.10.2020.]
- Gods of War, with Other Poems (Dub, priv. 1915);
- Imaginations and Reveries (Dublin & London: Maunsel
1915);
- Voices of the Stones (London 1925), vii, 61pp.;
- Midsummer Eve (NY: Crosby Gaige 1928);
- Enchantment and Other Poems (NY: Fountain; London: Macmillan
1930) [ltd. edn. of 542];
- Vale and Other Poems (London: Macmillan 1931), 56pp.;
- Songs and Its Fountains (London: Macmillan 1932); Do.
[facs. rep. edn.] (Coracle Press 2007), 148pp.
- The House of Titans and Other Poems (London: Macmillan
1934);
- Selected Poems (London: Macmillan 1935).
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See also Dark weeping [by] AE [The Ariel
Poems, No. 19] ([London 1929]), ill. [by Paul Nash].
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Drama |
- Deirdre: A Drama by AE (London 1903) [suppl. to Green
Sheaf, 7], [28cm.] and Do. [Tower Press, Ser. 2, No.
4] (Dublin: Tower Press Booklets 1907) [16 cm]; rep. as Deirdre:
a legend in three acts, intro. by Herbert V. Fackler [Irish
Drama Ser., Vol. 4] (Chicago: De Paul University 1970), 34pp.
[based in edn. in Imaginations and Reveries (1915)]. [See
also Artus trans. edn., infra.]
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trans., Godeleine Carpentier,
et al., eds., Deirdre et la renaissance celtique: Fiona MacLeod,
George William Russell [Le Mythe de Deirdre]
, William Butler Yeats (La Gacilly: Artus 1990), 189pp.
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Fiction (fantasy) |
- The Mask of Apollo and Other Stories (London & NY:
Macmillan 1903);
- The Candle of Vision (London: Macmillan 1918, 1920),
viii,175pp. [see details]
- The Interpreters (London: Macmillan 1922), 180pp.;
- Voices of the Stones (London: Macmillan 1925);
- The Avatars: A Futurist Fantasy (London: Macmillan 1933)
[also in ed., Raghavan & Nandini Iyer, The Descent of the
Gods].
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Criticism & autobiography |
- Some Irish Essays (Dublin: Maunsel 1906) [incls. Nationality
and Cosmopolitanism in Art, 1899];
- with Sir Horace Plunkett, United Irishwomen [Ireland] (Dublin: Maunsel 1911),
vi, 50pp.;
- National Being: Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity (Dublin
& London: Maunsel 1916; rep. Jan. 1917), 176pp. [blue hb.]; Do., rep. edn. (London: Macmillan 1930) [soft cover]; (p. Irish Academic Press, 1982) see extracts and full-text version in separate window - as attached.
- Imaginations and Reveries (NY: Macmillan 1916), xi, 255pp.; Imaginations and Reveries [1921], and Do. 2nd. edn. (London: Macmillan 1925) [see contents].
- Some Passages from the Letters of AE to WB Yeats (Dublin:
Cuala 1936);
- The Living Torch: AE, ed. Monk Gibbon, with an introductory
essay (London: Macmillan 1937), xii, 382pp., and Do. [rep.
edn.] (1970) [selected prose]; Do., facs. rep. edn. (Coracle
Press 2007), 400pp.
- Tribute to Thomas Davis ... With an account of the Thomas
Davis centenary meeting held in Dublin on Nov. 20th, 1914, including
Dr. Mahaffys prohibition of the Man called Pearse
[by Denis Gwynn], and an unpublished protest by A. E.
(Cork UP 1947), 22pp., 8o. [BML];
- Peter Kuch, ed., The Sunset of Fantasy [unfinished
autobiography], in Warwick Gould, ed., Yeats Annual, No.
10 (London: Macmillan 1993), pp.188-203.
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Also, Some Characters of the Irish
Literary Movement [typescript cited in Richard Ellmann,
James Joyce, OUP 1959; 1965, p.103; and note - an original
or copy of this is held in the James A. Healy Collection of Irish
Literature at the Green Library of Stanford University as - Box
12, Folder 197 - AE: Some Characters of the Irish Literary
Revival (lecture) AD-45 and partial trans. Also fragment of
typed draft - TD/TDc w/a - . [Cat. record available online;
accessed 07.04.2015.]
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Miscellaneous |
- ed., New Songs, selected by AE from the Poems of Padraic
Colum, Eva Gore Booth, Thomas Keohler, Alice Milligan, Susan Mitchell,
Seumas OSullivan, George Roberts, and Ella Young (Dublin:
ODonoghue & Co. 1904), 56pp., fb. ill.
- An Irish Mystics Testimony, in W. Evans Wentz,
Fair Faith in Celtic Countries (q.d.).
- with Sophie Bryant, Co-operation and Nationality: A
Guide for Rural References from This to the Next Generation
(Dublin: Maunsel & Company 1912), [8], 104, [4]pp.
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See also num. forewords incl. Shan Bullock, Mors et
Vita, foreword by AE [George Russell] (London: Werner Laurie
1923);
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Pamphlets [sel.] |
- The Hero in Man ([London]: Orpheus Press 1910),
34pp.
- The United Irishwomen: their place, work, and ideals /
by Horace Plunkett, Ellice Pilkington and George Russell ("AE");
with a preface by the Rev. T.A. Finlay [2nd edn.] (Dublin: Maunsel
[1911]), vi, 50pp. [20cm.];
- The Rural Community: An Address to the American Commission
of Agricultural Inquiry ... at the Plunkett House, Dublin, July
15th, 1913 ([Dublin] [1913]), 20pp. [copy in LSE];
- The National Being ([Sept.] 1916), [see extracts]
- A Plea for Justice: being a demand for a public enquiry into
the attacks on co-operative societies in Ireland / by Geo.
W. Russell, AE (Dublin: Irish Homestead [Dec.] 1920),
14pp.
- The Inner and Outer Ireland ([London] 1921).
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See also The Censorship Bill,
in Irish Statesman 10 (1928), pp.486-87, rep. in in Banned
in Ireland: Censorship & the Irish Writer, intro. &
ed. Julia Carlson (London: Routledge/US:Georgia UP 1990) [Appendix].
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Reviews & articles |
The Poetry of William B. Yeats, review of Poems
(London: T. Fisher Unwin 1895), in The Irish Weekly Independent,
26 Oct. 1895.
A New Irish Poetess, review of Eva Gore-Booth,
Poems (London: Longmans, Green and Co. 1898), in The
Daily Express (Dublin), 26 Nov. 1898
Literary Ideals in Ireland, in The Daily Express
[Dublin] (18 Nov. 1898), pp.49-56.
Nationality and Cosmopolitanism in Literature,
in The Daily Express [Dublin] (10 Dec. 1898), pp.79-88
The Cuchullin Saga, review of Eleanor Hull, ed.,
The Cuchullin Saga in Irish Literature (London: Alfred
Nutt 1898), in New Ireland Review (Jan. 1899), pp.333-338.
The Irish Literary Drama, review of Edward Martyn,
The Heather Field and Maeve, in The Daily Express
[Dublin] (28 Jan. 1899), p.3.
Politics and Character, The Daily Express
(Dublin), 25 February 1899, p.3.
Fiona Macleods New Book, review of Fiona
Macleod, The Dominion of Dreams (London: Constable 1899)
in The Daily Express (Dublin), 17 June 1899, p.3.
The Divine Adventure, review of Fiona Macleod,
The Divine Adventure, Iona: By Sundown Shores, Studies in Spiritual
History (London: Chapman and Hall 1900), in All Ireland
Review, 21 July 1900, p.2.
Note on William Larminie contributed to Stopford A. Brooke
and T. W. Rolleston, eds., A Treasury of Irish Poetry in the
English Tongue (London: Smith Elder 1900), pp.476-77.
The Dramatic Treatment of Heroic Literature, The
United Irishman (Dublin), 3 May 1902, p.3.
The Red Branch of Ulster, review of Lady Gregory,
Cuchulain of Muirthemne (London: John Murray 1902), in
The United Irishman (Dublin), 24 May 1902, p.2.
The Poetry of William Butler Yeats, The Reader
(New York), August 1903, pp.249-50.
A Book About The Earth Life, review of Ethel Longworth
Dames, Myths (Dublin: Hodges, Figgis. London: Simpkin,
Marshall, [1904]) in All Ireland Review, 16 January 1904, p.30.
Note on Standish OGrady in Justin McCarthy, ed., Irish
Literature: Selections in Verse and Prose (Chicago: De Bower
Eliot. Philadelphia: John D. Morris 1904), VII, 2237-40.
Preface to New Songs. A Lyric Selection made by AE from
Poems by Padraic Colum, Eva Gore-Booth, Thomas Keohler, Alice
Milligan, Susan Mitchell, Seumas OSullivan, George Roberts,
and Ella Young (Dublin: Dollard Printing House 1904).
The Poems of Seumas OSullivan, review of
Seumas OSullivan, Verses Sacred and Profane (Dublin:
Maunsel 1908), in Sinn Féin, 4 April 1908, pp.383-87.
The High Deeds of Finn, review of T.W. Rolleston,
The High Deeds of Finn and Other Bardic Romances of Ancient
Ireland (London: Harrap 1900), in The Path (Cheshire:
Hale), Oct. 1910, p.80.
The Poetry of James Stephens [Imagination and
Reveries, 1915]; rep. in AE: Imaginations and Reveries,
2nd edn. ,London: Macmillan 1925), pp.43-53.
The Boyhood of a Poet, review of W. B. Yeats,
Reveries Over Childhood and Youth (Dublin: Cuala Press
1916), in New Ireland, 16 Dec. 1916, pp.88-89.
Introduction to Standish James OGrady, The Coming
of Cuculain (Dublin: Talbot Press London: T. Fisher Unwin
1919)
On Quality of Sound, Times Literary Supplement
19 May 1921, p.323.
Foreword to Shan F. Bullock, Mors et Vita (London:
T. Werner Laurie 1923).
Foreword to F.R. Higgins, Island Blood (London: John
Lane 1925).
Foreword to Hugh Alexander Law, Anglo-Irish Literature
(London: Longmans 1926).
Address to the Thirtieth Annual Dinner of the American-Irish
Historical Society, delivered 28 January 1928, in Journal
of the American-Irish Historical Society (New York), XXVII,
368-80.
The Censorship in Ireland, The Nation and Athenaeum
(London), 22 Dec. 1928, pp.435-36.
ntroduction to Oliver St. John Gogarty, Wild Apples
(New York: Jonathan Cape and Harrison Smith 1929).
Foreword to Katharine Tynan, Collected Poems (London:
Macmillan 1930).
Mr Humbert Wolfes New Book, review of Humbert
Wolfe, Snow (London: Gollancz 1931), in The Observer,
12 July 1931, p.5
Introductory Essay to Hugh MacDiarmid, First Hymn to Lenin
and Other Poems (London: Unicorn Press 1931).
On the Character in Irish Literature, Foreword
to Frank OConnor, The Wild Birds Nest: Poems Translated
from the Irish (Dublin: Cuala Press 1932) [39pp.; ltd. edn.
250; rep. 1971].
The New Irish Academy: AE replies to Father Gannon,
The Irish Times, 15 Nov. 1932.
The Irish Academy of Letters: Letter from AE,
The Irish Times, 3 Dec. 1932.
The New Irish Academy: Letter from AE, The
Irish Times, 8 Dec. 1932.
The New Irish Academy: Letter from AE, The
Irish Times, 13 Dec. 1932.
Appreciation of Oliver St. John Gogarty, leaflet issued
by The Pond Lecture Bureau advertising Gogartys first lecture
tour of America (Jan.-March 1933)
The Poetry of My Friend, Foreword to Oliver St.
John Gogarty, Selected Poems (New York: Macmillan 1933).
Introduction to Seumas OSullivan, Twenty-five Lyrics
(Flansham: The Pear Tree Press 1933).
Introduction to Irene Haugh, The Valley of the Bells and
Other Poems (Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1933).
Orage: Memories, in A. R. Orage Memorial
Number, The New English Weekly, 15 Nov. 1934, pp.97-98,
including letter to the editor of The New English Weekly,
21 April 1932.
Appreciation: AE says of this Book, for Ruth Pitter,
A Mad Ladys Garland (London: Cresset Press 1934).
Foreword to Joseph ONeill, Land Under England
(London: Gollancz 1935).
The Sunset of Fantasy, The Dublin Magazine,
January 1938, pp.6-11.
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Additional |
- Preface to Some Irish Essays, The Tower Press Booklets,
1 (Dublin: Maunsel 1906)
- Our Cycle Expert and the Literary Drama, in The
Irish Homestead, V, 392-93 (3 June 1899).
- Britannia Rule-the-Wave, in Sinn Féin
(9 Feb. 1907), p.3.
- Dictionary of Mythological Characters [query].
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Collected Works |
The Collected Works of George Russell (AE),
gen. eds. Henry Summerfield & Colin Smythe (Gerrards Cross:
Colin Smythe 1979- ), CONTENTS: Pts. I & II: Selections
from the Contributions to the Irish Homestead, ed. Henry Summerfield,
2 vols. (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe; Atlantic Highland NJ: Humanities
Press 1979) [xiv, 493-1017pp]; Pt. III:The Descent of
the Gods, ed., Raghavan & Nandini Iyer (Gerrards Cross:
Colin Smythe; Atlantic Highland NJ: Humanities Press 1988), 780pp.
[see details]; and Do. [Pt. IV:]
q. tit.
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- Alan Denson, ed., Letters from AE, with a foreword by
Monk Gibbon (London: Abelard-Schuman 1961), 288pp., front. port.;
- Henry Summerfield, ed., The Irish Homestead: Selections from
the Contributions to the Irish Homestead by G. W. Russell, A.E.
2 vols. (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1984), 1017pp. [Vol.
xiv, 1, 492pp.];
- Carolyn Mary Pollard, The Political Writings of George Russell
(AE) During the 1913 Dublin Lock Out (The Author 1987) [UUC
Central Library, Coleraine].
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[ top ] |
Bibliographical details
The Candle of Vision (London: Macmillan 1918, 1920),
viii,175pp.; Do. (London: Macmillan 1928), [2], ix [1],
175, [1], 4pp., ill. [ink & crayon vignette on t.p.]; Do.,
rep. as The Candle of Vision, Autobiography of a Mystic,
introduction by Leslie Shepard [Quest Ser.] (London: Theosophical
Publishing House 1974), xv,175pp.; Do. [same title] (Gerrards
Cross: Colin Smythe 1975), 175pp.; Do., as The Candle
of Vision: Inner Worlds of the Imagination (Bridgeport: Prism
1990), 102pp., 22cm.; and Do. [another edn.], The Candle
of Vision (Coracle Press 2008); Do. (CreateSpace Independent
Publishing Platform 2016), 56pp.
Imaginations and Reveries (NY: Macmillan 1916), xi, 255pp. [ded. to John Quinn] CONTENTS - Nationality or Cosmopolitanism;
Standish O’Grady; The Dramatic Treatment of Legend; The Character of Heroic Literature; A Poet of Shadows; The Boyhood of a Poet; The Poetry of James Stephens; A Note on Seumas O’Sullivan; Art and Literature; An Artist of Gaelic Ireland Two Irish Artists; “Ulster”; Ideals of the New Rural Society; Thoughts for a Convention; The New Nation;
The Spiritual Conflict; On an Irish Hill; Religion and Love; The Renewal of Youth the Hero in Man the Meditation of Ananda; The Midnight Blossom; The Childhood of Apollo; The Mask of Apollo;
The Cave of Lilith; The Story of a Star; The Dream of Angus Oge; Deirdre. Dramatis Personae. (Available at Gutenberg Project - online; see copy in RICORSO Library - via index or as .docx - attached.)
Note: A Maunsel edition appeared with no date [1916?] and the New York Macmillan edition is conjecturally dated to 1916 in the TCD and Liverpool U Cats. (reflected in COPAC). There is a Maunsel & Roberts 2nd edition of 1921 (listed in the BL Cat/COPAC). This edition is also held at Cambridge, Hull, London Library, Nat. Lib. Scotland, Oxford ULibs, QUB and Warwick. There are various photocopy and internet editions - e.g., Do. (Coracle Press 2007), 328pp.
[online] and Do. (Echo Library 2007), 152pp. [online] (accessed 21.03.2022.)
The Descent of the Gods: AE's Mystical
Writings, ed. Raghavan Iyer & Nandini Iyer [Collected Works
of AE] (Colin Smythe 1988), 780pp. Contains Æ"s known mystical
writings, including his four major works, The Avatars (1933),
The Candle of Vision (1918), The Interpreters (1922),
and Song and its Fountains (1932), together with his letters
and other prose contributions to Dana, Ethical Echo, The
Internationalist, The Irish Theosophist, Lucifer,
and Ourselves, W.Y. Evans Wentz's interview with A.E. in The
Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries, Æ"s first independent
publication, To the Fellows of the Theosophical Society, his introduction
to City Without Walls, and many other spiritual books, reviews
and his hitherto unpublished story ‘The Return’.
Healy Collection |
Numerous papers of George AE
Russell are held in the James A. Healy Collection of Irish
Literature in the Green Library of Stanford University in
Box 12 - 199 folders including Some Characters of the
Irish Literary Revival (lecture) and fragment of typed
draft in Box 12, Folder 197. [Cat. record available online;
accessed 07.04.2015.] |
Note: The lecture is quoted extensively in Ellmanns
life of Joyce (James Joyce, [1959] 1982, pp.101-02n.),
with thanks to the Russell authority Alan Denson for
the information (i.e., access to it). A
copy is held today in the James A. Healy Collection
of the Green Library at Stanford University. It does
not appear to have been printed.
|
|
[See George Russell, review of A Vision by W. B. Yeats, in
The Irish Statesman (13 Feb. 1926), pp.714-16 & review
of A Packet for Ezra Pound by W. B. Yeats, in The Irish Statesman
(7 Sept. 1929), pp.11-12 - in RICORSO Library, Criticism
> Major Writers - via index
or as attached.]
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Criticism
- Darrell Figgis, AE (George Russell): A Study of the Man
and a Nation (Dublin & London: Maunsel; NY: Dodd, Mead
1919), 159pp.; Do., rep. edn. (Washington: Kennikat 1970).
- Robert Lynd [section on AE], in Voices of the New Ireland,
Ireland a Nation (London: G. Richards 1919).
- Seán Ó Faolain, The Humanity of AE,
in Inisfail, 1, 1 [sole issue] (1933) [q.p.].
- William M. Clyde, A.E. (Edinburgh: Moray 1935).
- John Eglinton, A Memoir of AE (London: Macmillan 1935),
291pp.,[front. ill. by Jerome Connor, c.1930].
- Raynor C. Johnson, The Light and the Gate (London: Hodder
& Stoughton 1964), 318pp., 4 pls.
- Lord Dunsany, A.E. in My Ireland (London:
Jerrolds 1937), pp.11-18.
- Monk Gibbon, intro. to The Living Torch: AE (London:
Macmillan 1937), xii, 371pp. [ Æs table-talk, a note-book
of his ideas and ideals; pp.66-67].
- Francis Merchant, A.E. : An Irish Promethean: A Study of the Contribution of George William Russell to World Culture / by Francis Merchan (Columbia, SC: Benedict College Press 1954), 2s42pp.;
- Robert Bernard Davis, George William Russell (London:
Macmillan 1937; rep. edn. Twayne 1977].
- Robert Lynd, A.E, in I Tremble to Think (1939),
pp.28-35 [available at Internet Archive - online].
- J. J. Byrne, AE and Sir Horace Plunkett, in Conor
Cruise OBrien, ed., The Shaping of Modern Ireland
(London: Routledge Kegan & Paul 1960; rep. 1970) [q.p.].
- Alan Denson, Printed Writings by George W. Russell (AE):
A Bibliography, with some notes on his pictures and portraits,
Foreword by Padraic Colum and Reminiscences of AE by M. J. Bonn;
a note on AE and paintings by Thomas Bodkin (Evanston: Northwestern
UP 1961; distrib. Colin Smythe [UK], 1975), 255pp., ill. [pls.
incl. ports.]
- Patricia Ann McFate, ‘AEs Portraits of the Artists: A
Study of The Avatars, in Éire-Ireland,
6, 4 (Winter 1971), pp.38-48 [see extract].
- John Hewitt, The Folded Dream: The Printed Words of AE,
in The Arts in Ireland, No. 3 (1973), [p.52].
- Henry Summerfield, That Myriad-Minded Man: A Biography of
G. W. Russell - AE (Gerrards Cross 1975), xiii,
354pp., ill. [16pp. of pls. - facsims., ports.; 22cm.]
- Richard M. Kain & James H. OBrien, George Russell
(A.E.) (Lewisburg: Bucknell UP; London: AUP 1976).
- Henry Summerfield, AE as a Literary Critic, in
Joseph Ronsley, ed., Myth and Reality in Irish Literature
(Ontario 1977), pp.41-61.
- Robert ODriscoll, AE and the Birth of a Nation,
in Irish Times (27 June 1980), [q.p.].
- Liam ODowd, Intellectuals in Twentieth-century
Ireland and the Case of George Russell (AE), in The Crane
Bag, 9, 1 [Contemporary Cultural Debate Issue]
(1985), pp.6-25.
- Malcolm Richardson, AEs Deirdre and Yeatss
Dramatic Development, Eire-Ireland, 20, 4 (1985),
pp.89-105.
- Peter Kuch, Yeats and AE: The Antagonism that Unites
Dear Friends (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1986), 291pp.
- Nicholas Allen, A Political Vision: George Russell and
the Interpreters , in Critical Ireland: New Essays
in Literature and Culture, ed. Aaron Kelly & Alan Gillis
(Dublin: Four Courts Press 2001), pp.1-6;
- James Heaney, Æ, The Irish Civil War,
and the Dialogical Text, in Critical Ireland: New Essays
in Literature and Culture, ed. Aaron Kelly & Alan Gillis
(Dublin: Four Courts Press 2001), pp.95-101.
- Nicholas Allen, Free Statement: Censorship and the Irish
Statesman, in Last Before America : Irish and American
Writing: Essays in Honour of Michael Allen, ed. Fran Brearton
& Eamonn Hughes (Belfast: Blackstaff Press 2001), pp.84-98;
- Nicholas Allen, George Russell (Æ) and the New Ireland,
1905-30 (Dublin: Four Courts Press 2003), 240pp.
- Thomas Duddy, George William Russell (Æ),
in Dictionary of Irish Philosophers, ed. Duddy (2004).
- Peter R. Kuch ‘George William Russell (1867–1935),
in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Online)
[accessed 2011] ;
- Nicholas Allen, Russell, George William (Æ)
in Dictionary of Irish Biography, ed. James McGuire & James
Quinn (Dublin: RIA 2009).
- Higgins, Geraldine, Heroic Revivals from Carlyle to Yeats (NY: Palgrave Macmillan 2012), 237pp.
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See also:
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- W. R. Rodgers, ed., Irish literary portraits; W.B. Yeats, James Joyce, George Moore, J.M. Synge, George Bernard Shaw, Oliver St. John Gogarty, F.R. Higgins, AE (George Russell) (NY Taplinger [1973]), xix, 236pp. [q.pp.; from radio broadcast conversations with those who knew them];
- Simone Téry, L'île des bardes:
Notes sur la littérature irlandaise contemporaine - Les
légendes anciennes [Collection bleu] (Paris: Ernest
Flammarion [1925]), 247pp. [sects. on Yeats, A.E., Synge, Stephens,
Moore, and Joyce]; H. W. Nevinson, Changes and Chances
(1923) [brief vignette]
- Nicholas Allen, National Reconstruction : George Russell (Æ) and the Irish Convention, in Ireland in Transition, 1867-1921, ed. D. George Boyce & Alan ODay (London & NY: Routledge 2004), [Chap.; qpp.]
- Richard Kain, Dublin in the Age
of William Butler Yeats and James Joyce (Oklahoma UP 1962)
[in which Russell is virtually the main figure].
|
Note: Téry also issued En Irlande:
de la guerre dindépendance à la guerre civile,
1914-1923 (Paris: E. Flammarion [1923]) 284pp.
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[ top ]
References
Katinka Hesselink - Religious and Spiritual
Wisdom has an AE Russell page with numerous obituary notices
from The Canadian Theosophist and elsewhere - incl. texts by George
Moore, Ernest Boyd, Oliver St. John Gogarty, Pamela Hinkson, and
Padraic Colum [ online].
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Justin McCarthy, Irish Literature (1904),
gives selection of poetry, and excerpt from Nationality and Imperialism,
printed in [Lady Gregory, ed.,] Ideals in Ireland (1901).
D. J. ODonoghue, Geographical Distribution
of Irish Ability (1906), end papers advertise New Songs, a
lyric selection made by George Russell [poems of P McCormac Colm, Alice
Milligan, etc.], front. by Jack B. Yeats.
D. J. ODonoghue, Poets of Ireland
(Dublin: Hodges Figgis 1912) lists Homeward Songs [1894]; The
Earths Breath; Nuts of Knowledge; The Divine Vision;
and By Still Waters; notes that he is in Yeatss Book of Irish
Verse, and in E C Steadman, Victorian Anthology (1896) and Lyra
Celtica (18896), and all later Irish anthologies; The Mask of Apollo
and Other Stories (Dublin 1905); New Songs, selected by AE
from the Poems of Padraic Colum, Eva Gore Booth, Thomas Keohler, Alice
Milligan, Susan Mitchell, Seumas OSullivan, George Roberts, and
Ella Young (Dublin: ODonoghue & Co. 1904), 56pp., fb. ill. Jack
B. Yeats; Geo. W. Russell writes on Popular Credit, Irish Year Book
(Sinn Féin [c.1919]), pp.285-89. Also Violet Russell, wife of AE,
Heroes of the Dawn (Dublin 1913), the Finn Cycle retold.
Arthur Quiller Couch, ed., Oxford Book of English
Verse, 1250-1918 (new ed. 1929), pp.910-12.
Robert Hogan, ed., A Dictionary of Irish
Literature, 2 vols. [rev. edn.] (Conn: Greenwood Press 1996), notes
a capacity for self-mockery in a parody of Seumas OSullivan by
AE as S OS in Secret Springs of Dublin Song
(1918), which opens with the line, Child, there are mists in my
mind.
D. E. S. Maxwell,
Modern Irish Drama (1984), lists Deirdre (Maunsel
1907); Selected Poems (Lon. 1935); The Irish Statesman,
1923-30. Studies, Robert Davis, George William Russell - AE
(NY: Twayne, 1977); Richard Kain and James OBrien, George Russell,
A.E. (Bucknell UP 1976).
Seamus Deane, gen. ed., Field Day Anthology
of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day Co. 1991), Vol. 2, selects Letters
to W. B. Yeats; from Collected Poems, Carrowmore
[541-42]; also Faith, Three Counsellors, Symbolism,
Immortality, In Connemara, Truth,
The Twilight of Earth, On Behalf of Some Irishmen not
Followers of Tradition; Vale and Other Poems, A Prisoner
[Terence MacSwiney]; Russell, Connolly, and Shaw speak in London for Larkins
strike (Shaws pamphlet), 513; Irish protestant contributors to cultural
nationalism [Terence Brown, ed.], 517; his Deirdre sourced in Standish
OGradys History of Ireland, Vol I, 521; dissatisfaction
with the existing state of things converting into mysticism [Deane, ed.],
721; Joyce lumps together Yeats and Russell in The Holy Office,
769; [Yeats biog., 830; some of the most spirited attacks on cosmopolitanism
came [ironically] from leading Anglo-Irish figures such as [Gibbon, ed.],
953; [do. 954-55], in Literary Ideals in Ireland (1899), 956; [implied
reference, symbolic school, DP Moran, 971]; [cited in TW Rolleston,
973], not belong in Corkerys Thurles GAA crowd (1931),
1010; Irish Homestead, inter al., 1026; James Stephens discovered
working in solicitors office by AE, on reading one of his poems in Griffiths
Sinn Fein, 1219; 560. ALSO, Beckett on AE, Recent Irish Poetry,
FDA3 345 [.. protrudes in to the void.] FDA2, AEs weekly review
The Irish Stateman was revived in 1923 after a three year gap by
Horace Plunkett and was ed. by AE from that date until 1930, 547n.
Seamus Deane, gen. ed., Field Day Anthology
of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day Co. 1991), Vol. 3: WORKS [a shortlist
only; as in Works, supra]. FDA3 selects
Seven Years Change [94-95]; REFS & REMS at 51n
[Ulysses, Telemachus, Our mighty mother!, phrase
used by AE in several poems]; 60 [Ulysses, Proteus, AE,
pimander, good shephard of men]; 61 [AE represents ethereal mode
in Ulysses, Scylla]; 62n [Ulysses, Scylla, quotes What
of all the will to do?/It has vanished long ago, from Sung
on a By-Way by AE]; 87 [Dubliners stories in AEs
Irish Homestead (sic)]; 90-91 [Irish Statemans strenuous
efforts to maintain idealism of pre-revolutionary period, ed. Terence
Brown]; 92 [periods dominant realism which AE had anticipated
and identified]; 131 [early poem of Kavanagh in one of the final issues
of The Irish Statesman]; 245 [Beckett, Recent Irish Poetry
essay, George Russell, who, when thoroughly galvanised by the
protracted apathies, rigidities and abstractions, enters his hearts
desire with such precipitation as positively to protrude into the void,
Bookman, 1934], 248n [S. OGrady father of the Irish
Renaissance for AE and Yeats]; 480 [AE passed into exile,
OFaolain, Vive Moi]; 482 [I knew Russell, in the
common, intimate, unbuttoned way in which men know men, and it was apparent
that Russell never knew him [Yeats] that way, OFaolain, ibid];
499 [MacDopagh, on AE, His mysticism is too vague, he remarked,
comparing it with that of St Johnof the Cross. Secretly, I resented
what he said, for I admired the poems of AE, but I kept respectful silence,
Clarke, Penny from the Clouds, Chp. 3.iii]; 546 [Hubert Butler
in relation to; ed. note]; 547 [see supra]; 548 [AE had travelled
hundreds of miles on his bicycle, Hubert Butler, Escape from
the Anthill (1985)]; 692n [Irish Homestead, 1895, ed. AE,
under Plunket, Ireland in the New Century, but not named in text];
808 [biog. Plunkett]; 939 [Frank OConnor notes in 1942 that the
pre-revolutionary unity of nationalists, Catholic and Protestant, aristocratic
and labour, exemplified by AE and others, fell apart]; 940 [AE left,
finding post-revolutionary Ireland unacceptable, ed. John Wilson Foster];
941.
Daniel Karlin, ed., The Penguin Book of Victorian
Verse (London: Penguin 1997), incls. George William Russell [AE] -
with 8 other Irish poets: William Allingham, Jane Barlow, Edmund Dowden,
William Larminie, James Clarence Mangan, , John Todhunter, Oscar Wilde,
W. B. Yeats ... amidst tens of English poets.
Brian M. Walker, et al. eds, Faces of Ireland
(Belfast: Appletree Press 1992), selects from Co-operation and Nationality
(Dublin 1912), pp.82-3, 88-91; photo of committee membership, Irish
Co-Operative Womens Guild Belfast; also creamery at Donemana Co
Tyrone, c.1910; notes 381 local branches and membership of 95,000 in
IAOS by 1910.
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Booksellers
Cathach Books (Cat. No. 12) lists The National
Being, Some Thoughts on Irish Policy (Dub 1917) [?2nd edn.]; Collected
Poems (London: 1918; The Candle of Vision (London: 1918); Homeward Songs
(London: 1901); The Interpreters (London: 1927); Vale & Other Poems
(London: 1931); New Songs (Dub. 1904); The House of the Titans (London:
1934); also AE, by Darrell Figgis (London: 1934), biog.
Cathach Books (Winter 1996-97) lists Francis
Hackett, intro., George Russell, AE, The Economics of Ireland and the
Policy of the British Government [The Freeman Pamphlets] (NY: Huebsch
1921); Ireland and the Empire at the Court of Conscience (Dublin: Talbot
1921), 16pp.; AE, Horace Plunkett, John Quinn, The Irish Home-Rule convention,
Thoughts for a Convention [3rd edn. 1917], by AE; A Defence
of the Convention, by Plunkett, and An American Opinion,
by Quinn (NY: Macmillan 1917), 183pp.
Hyland Books (Cat. No. 224) lists The Hero in
Man (1909, 1910); The Renewal of Youth [Orpheus Ser. No. VII] (1911);
Salutation [priv.; single sheet typescript, 5 stanzas]; Thoughts for
a Convention (2nd & 3rd edns. 1917) [corrects Denson 1918]; Voices
of the Stones (1925); foreword to Sir F F Vane, Agin the Governments
(1929) [Hyland 214]. The Renewal of Youth [Orpheus Ser. No. VII] (1911)
[Denson 18]; Imaginations and Reveries (1915); The National Being: Some
Thoughts on Irish Polity (1916) [Denson 30]; The Inner and Outer Ireland
(1921) [Denson 41b]; Enchantment and Other Poems (NY 1930) [Denson 48];
The House of the Titans and Other Poems (1934) [Denson 53]; Selected
Poems (1935) [Denson 54]; AEs Letters to Minanlabain, introd.
by L. K. Porter (NY: 1937); Alan Denson, ed., Letters from AE (1961);
Printed Writings by George W. Russell (AE), A bibliography, with some
Notes on his Pictures and Portraits, foreword by Padraic Colum (Evanston
1961).
[ top ]
Notes
Henry Cousins quotes AE in The Hound
of Uladh: These myths were born / Out of the spirit of man,
and drew their meaning / From that unplumbed profundity. I think / In
after ages they will speak to us / With deeper voices and meanings ...
W. B. Yeats: Yeatss personal library, now
held in the NLI (Dublin) contains a copies of the following texts and
papers, each with sheets of notes slipped in: The Candle of Vision
(MS 40,568 / 200; OShea Cat., 1799: 2 shts being copy of
a letter from WBY to Sturge Moore); Collected Poems (MS 40,568
/ 201; OShea Cat. 1800: 5 shts.) The Earth Breath
… (MS 40,568 / 202; OShea Cat. 1803 (33 shts.); Songs
and its Fountains (MS 40,568 / 203; OShea Cat. 1812 (4 shts.)
James Joyce (1): Joyce visited
AE at Garville Rd., Rathgar, on 18 Aug. 1902 and was told by him that
he would never be a real poet as he had not enough chaos in him. (For
Richard Kains account of the oft-narrated meetings with Russell
and with Yeats, see Commentary, supra.)
At-homes: Sunday was the evening of Russells
evenings at-homes. For Russell's words to Stanislaus
Joyce about his brother, see under Stanislaus [q.v.].
James Joyce (2): See Joyces bon mot
about his debts to Russell: A.E.I.O.U. (Ulysses,
Bodley Head Edn., 1865 &c., p.243.) Note: Declan Kiberd remarks
that Joyce's debt to the mystic poet Russell extend beyond the financial
since the older man gave him his first literary break - i.e., The
Sisters and other stories in Irish Homestead. (Kiberd,
Ulysses and Us, 2009, p.139.)
James Joyce (3): in publishing Joyces
first three Dubliners stories (The Sisters, Eveline,
and After the Race) in the Irish Homestead, George
Russell became the first publisher of Joyces fiction; see Michael
Groden, A Textual and Publishing History, in A Companion to
Joyce Studies, ed. Zack Bowen, and James Carens (1984), p. 78ff.
Note also, a restored Ulysses refers to AE, pimander, good
shepherd [sic] of men (James Joyce, Ulysses, Corrected
Edn., ed. Hans Walter Gabler, 1984; Penguin edn., p.36.)
Liam OFlaherty wrote to Russell at the Irish
Statesman criticising editorial policy: I dont for a moment
claim that your paper is not doing good work, [he] wrote, But
I do claim that it is not Irish, that it is not national, and that it
is not representative in any respect of the cultural forces, in all spheres,
that are trying to find room for birth in this country at present.
(20 June 1925; cited in S.B. Kennedy, Irish Art & Modernism,
1991.)
Monk Gibbon calls AE [George Russell] one
of the loveliest souls that has ever found itself in Ireland,
in The Seals (1935, rep. Dublin: Allen Figgis 1970), p.27.
Anthony Allen: Allens First Songs
([Dublin]: Maunsel & Co. 1918), is dedicated to Russell [Intro.,
viii, 56pp.; printed by George Roberts.
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Celtic inspiration: In an open letter to editor
of Daily Express (10 Sept. 1898) Russell noted that no Irish artist
had found inspiration in traditional Celtic sources as had the writers,
blaming this lack of national art on the absence of great
paintings on display in exhibitions. (S.B. Kennedy, Irish Art &
Modernism, 1991, pp.5-6.)
Candle of Vision: the title is apparently
inspired by the biblical verses: The Spirit of man is the candle
of the Lord (Proverbs), and: When his candle shined on my
head and by his light I walked through darkness. (Job.)
The Lodge: In April 1891, a month before death
of Mme. Blavatsky, AE moved into The Lodge, at No. 3 Upper Ely Place,
recently purchased and placed at the disposal of the Theosophical Society
by Frederick and Annie Dicks; shared the accommodation with Daniel Dunlop,
Malcolm Magee (br. of John Eglinton), Arthur Dwyer (with both of whom
he shared a room at times), James Noal, Charles Johnstons sister
Georgie, Violet North, and James Pryse. (Summerfield, That Myriad-Minded
Man, 1975, p.33.) Note further, The firm Whaley which published his
first collection was started by Charles Weekes.
Julian Symons, reviewing Michael North, The
Political Aesthetic of Yeats, Eliot and Pound (Camb. UP ?1993),
cites North as saying that one historian of Fascism regarded AEs
The National Being as a virtual blueprint for Italian Fascism.
Graham Greene: a favourite quotation of his
was the lines from George Russell, In the lost childhood of Judas/Christ
was portrayed. (See Augustine Martin, reviewing biography of Green
by Norman Sherry, Irish Times, 17 Sept. 1994.)
Good show!: From August 23rd to September
3rd, 1904, together with Constance Gore-Booth and her Polish husband,
Count Casimir Dunin Markievicz, AE showed 63 out of the 220
paintings in an exhibition in Dublin entitled Pictures of Two Countries.
He said: My exhibition has just opened and my heart is full of woe
because I have sold over half of them the first day.. Further, In
a memorial catalogue of John Quinns collection issued in 1926, no
fewer than 62 paintings by AE were listed.(Diane Beale, report on
new Russell show, The Irish Times, 23 Aug. 2004.)
[ top ]
Un-typical Ulster: Russell is a character in St.
John Ervines Changing Winds (1917): Was there any one
on earth less like the typical Ulsterman than George Russell, who preached
mysicism and better business, or Ernest Harper [fict. char.], who took
penny tramrides to pay visits to the faries. (p.135; cited in Richard
Mills, DPhil, UUC 1997.)
At homes: Alcohol free Sunday at homes
chez George and Violet Russell were attended by guests such as Osborn
Bergin, Padraic Colum, Susan Mitchell, Sean OCasey (twice and
with bad grace), Frank OConnor, Sean OFaolain, Seamus OSullivan,
James Stephens and Yeats. The last-named held Mondays which drew
many away. After Violet died in 1932 AE moved to London and later Bournemouth;
buried Mt. Jerome, Dublin, with mile-long cortège. There is an
account of one such evening in Francis Stuarts Black List,
Section H (1971).
Last things: signs his Will, 14 June, witnessed
by Mrs Sophie Jacobs and Miss Kathlen Goodfellow, bequeathing all to his
second son Diarmuid; moves to Havenhurst nursing home, Canford Cliffs,
Bournemouth, being taken accompanied by Charles Weekes on the train; undergoes
abdominal operation, Stagsden Nursing Home, Bournemouth, 10 July 1935;
visited by C. P. Curran, and accepts messages from Dublin friends, 16
July 1935; joined by Oliver St. John Gogarty (by plane), 17 July; receives
affectionate message from Yeats, solicited by C. P. Curran and Pamela
Travers, removing a cloud from his mind, d. shortly after 11 p.m., 17
July 1935 of rectal cancer [carcinoma], with Curran, Weekes, Gogarty and
W. K. Magee [John Eglinton] at his bedside; coffin escorted to Holyhead
by James Stephens, Helen Waddell and others; aeroplane escort provided
for ship on arrival in Dun Laoghaire; funeral in form of modified Anglican
service conducted by Rev. C. C. Duggan; funeral mourners led by his eldest
son Brian Hartley Russell, Diarmuid arriving by plane in London afterwards;
attended by Eamon de Valera (Pres. of Ireland), W. B. Yeats, R. A. Anderson,
Seumas OSullivan, Joseph ONeill, F. R. Higgins, W. T. Cosgrave,
Gogarty and James Stephens; oration delivered by Frank OConnor for
Irish Academy of Letters; bur. Mt. Jerome, Co. Dublin, 19 July. (See Alan
Denson, Letters from AE, London: Abelard Schuman 1961, Chronological
table, p.xl.)
Cordial haters: It was George Russell, not George
Moore as often alleged, who coined the description of a literary movement
as five or six people who live in the same town and hate each
other cordially. (See Richard Kain, Dublin in the Age of William
Butler Yeats and James Joyce, Oklahoma UP 1962; Newton Abbot: David
Charles 1972, p.75.)
Portrait: Seated portrait in oil by John Butler
Yeats, 1903, NGI; See also Hilary Pyle, Estelle Solomons, Patriot Portraits
(1966) for portrait. Also, George Russell by Hilda Russell (1929), Ulst.
Museum; see Anne Crookshank, Irish Portraits Exhibition, Ulster Mus. 1965.
See remarks on Russell in Gogartys Memoir of Yeats. Also,
an oil portrait by Nigel Newton [NGI].
Kith & Kin: Diarmuid Russell issued
The Portable Irish Reader (1946) and Selected Prose of G. B.
Shaw (1953), 1004pp.
Namesake: not to be confused with the Rt. Hon.
George W. E[rskine] Russell (1853-1919) who was among the most prominent
converts to Catholicism from the Church of England - a son of Lord Charles
Russell and one-time MP, he was a friend of Gladstone whose life he wrote
(1891), and of Sydney Smith (ditto, 1904) and Cardinal Manning. He edited
the collected works of Matthew Arnold (1903-04) and issued a study of
Arnold (1907), as well as Spirit of England (1915) and num. works. There
is a life of G. W. E. Russell by Arthur Stanton (Longmans, 1917).
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