With the 2016 census taking place on Sunday, 24 April this year, my thoughts turned to the Royal Irish Academy staff of over 100 years ago who filled out their census forms on 2 April 1911. Out of curiosity, I searched the 1911 census for anyone who listed themselves as employed at the Royal Irish Academy. The 1911 form asked only for one’s occupation, not place of work and as such, I was not holding out hope of finding anyone so thorough as to include it! However, up popped Maud Anna Evans Joynt (incorrectly listed on the census website as Maud Anna Emma Joynt).

1911 census form for Maud Joynt (Image: National Archives of Ireland)

The census form shows the 43 year old Joynt living at 21 Annesley Park, Rathmines, with her cousin Ellen Jane Bell (50). Both women were unmarried. Maud gives her occupation as ‘Assistant to the Editor of Irish Dictionary, Royal Irish Academy’ and notes that she speaks English and ‘some Irish’ which is perhaps overly modest.

21 Annesley Park, Rathmines (Image: Google Maps)

While her cousin Ellen is listed as a Methodist, Maud states that she has ‘no church’. The enumerator has expanded on this, noting that the information was refused. This is interesting as Joynt was raised in a Methodist family and her brother, Rev. George Arthur Joynt, was a Methodist Minister and later President of the Methodist Church in Ireland. In fact, in her later life Maud would be described by one of her peers, Mary Hayden, as ‘a Buddhist and a Theosophist.’[1]

More interestingly, under respective infirmities, both women entered ‘unenfranchised’ [sic]. This small act of dissent comes as no surprise as Joynt had long been active in groups advocating the advancement of women, both politically and professionally. Among the groups in which she was involved were the Irish Women’s Franchise League, Irish Women’s Progressive Union and the Irish Association of Women-Graduates and Candidate Graduates. Many Irish suffragettes refused to participate in the 1911 census as a protest against their disenfranchisement. It is thought to be for this reason that Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington did not enter her details on the census, although the enumerator tried to circumvent this by entering her (largely incorrect) details himself. Maud Joynt was a correspondent of Hanna and Francis Sheehy-Skeffington, Dr. Kathleen Lynn and Mary Hayden amongst others, and letters written by her can be found among the Sheehy-Skeffington Papers at the National Library of Ireland.

Maud Joynt was born on 7 March 1868 at Woodberry House, Co. Roscommon to Lily Anna Holton and Christopher Joynt MD, a Surgeon General with the Indian Army. A letter from Maud’s sister Mabel Sarah detailing Maud’s early life was sent to the Irish scholar Eleanor Knott and is now preserved in our Eleanor Knott Collection [2]. In it, Mabel Sarah notes ‘Most of our family was born in India but it was always Maud’s proud boast that she was a real Paddy and was born in Co. Roscommon, in 1868, although she spent part of her early childhood in India. I used to hear from my father that she was an unusually precocious child and was able to read when very young. Indeed he taught her a little Greek when she was 5. A very early notebook of hers that I came across shows great originality of mind and a remarkable assortment of different kinds of knowledge for a child.’

Indeed, once home in Ireland Maud had a brilliant academic career, first at Alexandra College Dublin and then at the Royal University, where she graduated with a first-class honours BA (1889) and MA (1890) in modern literature (English, French and German). After teaching German for a time at the Methodist College in Belfast, she resigned her position and travelled through Europe to Paris, Heidelberg and Florence. In a strange twist, she left some of the books she bought in Florence in a house she had been renting from Frances (Cissie) Sinclair, the aunt of Samuel Beckett, who later found the books in his aunt’s house and kept them for his own library. In a letter to a friend he noted ‘Cissie pushed up some Italian books that had been left behind by outgoing tenant… All bought in Florence by Maud Joynt at the end of the last century. She might have been nice to know’.[3]

Upon her return, she resumed teaching positions at Loreto College, Alexandra College and Dominican College. Having an interest in the revival of the Irish language, she attended the School of Irish Learning in 1906 and 1907.

School of Irish Learning 1913. Maud Joynt is standing in the back row on the far right. (Image: RIA C/24/5/C)

In January 1909, she was employed as an assistant for the Dictionary of the Irish Language, a project based here at the RIA, much like our current research projects. Between 1913 and 1976 it published a Dictionary of the Irish Language in 23 fascicules containing approx 35,000 entries.[4] Its General Editor was Professor Osborn Bergin and Eleanor Knott worked alongside Joynt as an assistant. One review of the volume Fasciculus II, jointly edited by Knott and Joynt, noted that they had ‘attained a standard of excellence never before attained in Irish lexicographical work and rare in the lexicographical work of any country’[5]. She seems to have been a popular member of staff, with The Irish Times noting in 1929 how ‘she is well known to all frequenters to the Royal Irish Academy’.[6]

Joynt also translated medieval Irish manuscripts, which she saw not only as a scholarly task, but one which was infused with a nationalist purpose. In an article entitled ‘The Future of the Irish Language’ published in The New Ireland Review in 1900, Joynt argues ‘Why should we not prepare the way for the coming poet of the Gaelic race, by providing him with books worth reading in his native tongue? We need not be afraid of impairing his originality or his racial and political instincts by so doing’.[7] This was only one of her many contributions to journals, periodicals and magazines.

Active in matters of social justice and reform, a perusal of newspaper archives shows Joynt’s wide range of interests. She can be found attending meetings of the Irish Women’s Progressive Union (1899), being elected a member of the Gaelic League (1899), being appointed to the Irish Committee of the Pan-Celtic Congress (1899), attending a meeting of the Philanthropic Reform Society (1901), attending meetings of the Alexandra Guild Tenement Company which aimed to assist ‘not only with the housing problem but also with the moral and mental improvement of the people’[8] (1902), signing a letter protesting against Hannah Sheehy-Skeffington’s dismissal as a teacher at the Rathmines School of Commerce (1912), donating money to Inghinidhe na hÉireann (1913), signing a letter advocating peace and pacifism from the Irishwoman’s International League (1922) and subscribing to ‘Chraoibhin Aoibhinn’, the Douglas Hyde Testimonial (1935).

In many ways, as a Buddhist, theosophist, vegetarian and feminist, Maud Joynt was ahead of her time and in a minority in early twentieth-century Dublin. While Eleanor Knott is rightly known for her work, particularly with regard to Early Irish and bardic poetry, Maud Joynt remains a relatively unknown figure. This is despite her being awarded an honorary D. Litt. by the NUI in 1937 ‘in recognition of her scholarly works and of her endeavours for the university education of women’[9].

Joynt died in July 1940, nine years before her former colleague Knott would become one of the first elected women members of the RIA. Knott described her former colleague in glowing terms – ‘She was a singularly industrious worker, rigidly methodical and conscientious, unfailingly clearheaded…’ but noting also her ‘gift for friendship, her solicitude and kindness’.[10] The Kilkenny People concurred, stating that ‘…those who were privileged to know personally a lady of such rich and gentle mind will not soon forget her’.[11]. Maud Joynt is buried in Mount Jerome Cemetery, South Dublin, alongside her sister Mabel Sarah and two brothers.

Further reading:

• Knott, Eleanor, ‘Maud Joynt’, Éigse 2 (1940), 226-229.
• Ní Thuama, Íde, ‘Joynt, Maud Anna Evans’ in Dictionary of Irish Biography (www.dib.cambridge.org)
• Breathnach, Diarmuid and Máire Ní Mhurchú, ‘Joynt, Maud’ in An Bunachar Náisiúnta Beathaisnéisí Gaeilge (www.ainm.ie)

Karen de Lacey
Nowlan Archivist

When I was thirteen years of age I read J. J. Lee’s Ireland, 1912-1985. This was the book that sparked my love of history and politics. Reading this book brought to life history in a way nothing else had. It made me realise that Irish history wasn’t an abstract notion but a tangible link to the present day. The only other time I have felt that link as strongly was during my first weeks in the Royal Irish Academy Library. Now I could view manuscripts daily that opened up the Irish past in a way that I had never experienced before. During the annual closure I had the privilege of cleaning and checking the Haliday pamphlets, which allowed me to see daily life as it was being lived out during the 18th and 19th centuries. I have never had access to material like this before. I found it both a humbling yet exhilarating experience. This is the reason I love interning as a Library Assistant in the RIA Library. Looking around the Reading Room I get to see the best of Ireland both through its history and its scholars. Not many people can say they experience that daily!

My day to day tasks have been varied and interesting. Being a Library Assistant in the Reading Room is like being on the front line. You are the first point of contact with anyone who comes to the library. This has been a very rewarding experience. Some days I could be helping a Reader source a journal article for their thesis, other days I could be recounting the history of the Meeting Room to visitors from Utah.

My favourite part of working in the Reading Room was the time I spent with the collections, particularly the W.T Cosgrave collection. This is a new collection to the Library and one I was fortunate to work on, helping number items individually and amending the online catalogue. My favourite piece from this collection is RIA/P285/384, which is a photograph of two priests and an ‘in disguise’ W.T. Cosgrave. On first inspection it is a completely unremarkable photo. It shows what seem to be three priests posing for a photograph. But it is the story behind it that makes it fascinating.

After the 1^st Dáil, which had been a revolutionary parliament, was banned in September 1919 by the British – members of the ‘rebel’ government had to go underground. W.T. Cosgrave was forced to go on the run as there was a price of £3,500 on his head. A priest from The Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate brought W.T. to their monastery in Co. Wicklow and it was there that W.T. hid out under the name Br. Doyle. He stayed there for some time, with only two members of the community knowing his true identity. It was during this period when W.T. was on the run that the photograph was taken.[1]

The reason this photo captivates my interest is because I think it is remarkable that less than 100 years ago a future leader of this country was forced to go on the run to avoid arrest by the British Forces. To me, this photograph highlights the huge change that has occurred in the country over the past century. This is why collections like the W.T. Cosgrave papers are so important to preserve. They showcase a side of history that makes major events more relatable to the modern reader.

Another project that I loved working on was the setting up of this Library Blog. I am truly passionate that libraries today need to be active on Social Media to engage their readers and help new readers find our collections. If we do not promote ourselves and the importance of the collections we hold, we are doomed to be labelled as irrelevant. In an institution such as the Library of the Royal Irish Academy, it is our duty to promote the historical and literary treasures that we are so fortunate to have. It also gives our patrons a glimpse into the daily workings of the library and gives us, the staff of the library, a platform to show our passion for the library.

My time interning in the Library has been wonderful. I have had the opportunity to work on various projects such as the digitizing of our Members Certificates, cataloguing Marriage Referendum literature, welcoming over 1,200 members of the public on Culture Night and helping set up various exhibitions that the library had during my internship. I also learned a great deal about the day to day running of a library. Accessioning books and pamphlets, cataloguing and updating records, retrieval of books and materials and making sure that everything was where it was supposed to be. All of this work helped me appreciate how varied the job of Library Assistant is. Overall I have loved every day of my internship and I know the experience I have gained from the RIA Library will stay with me for the rest of my working life.

Blog, n. abbreviation for Weblog n.

Salina Journal (Kansas), 21 Apr. 2002 ‘Blogs contain daily musings about news, dating, marriage, divorce, children, politics in the Middle East…or millions of other things or nothing at all’. OED, 2003 entry, accessed 10/03/2016.

Falling into the ‘millions of other things’ category, this is the opening blog post from the RIA Library. When our intern, Sinéad Noonan, suggested starting up a blog, our library team grasped the opportunity to use blogging as another medium to convey our messages to a wide (and growing) online community. So, you ask, what are our messages?

Primarily, we communicate about our library and archive. As a core part of the Royal Irish Academy since its foundation in Dublin in 1785, [1] we hold major resources for scholars and all who wish to engage, with Ireland’s history, its language, literature, archaeology and antiquities, family history and countless other aspects of Irish life through the ages. It has always been part of our remit to promote the use of our resources and to engage with the community of scholars.

In the past this involved making the collections available to those who needed to consult them for research purposes – for example, we granted access to our collections to the Ordnance Survey (OS) staff working on the 6-inch mapping of Ireland in the nineteenth century, thereby enabling them to fact check and write up their findings. In time, the Ordnance Survey presented the bulk of the OS papers relating to the map project to the Academy.

Over the years we have encouraged the publication of these OS papers by institutions and individuals in order to make them more widely accessible. We have also digitised a huge number of the OS topographical drawings in the collections and these are accessible via our online catalogue. Things came full circle when the current Ordnance Survey generously funded the publication of Glimpses of Ireland’s past ─ the Ordnance Survey Memoir drawings: topography and technique / Angélique Day (Dublin, 2014), a publication featuring selected drawings from the OS collections. In 2014, we held an exhibition on the Survey’s contribution to Ireland since 1824 and organised a very successful free lecture series on various aspects of the Survey past and present. These lectures and others are available as podcasts on our website and are another means of bringing the collections to you, the reader/listener/information seeker wherever you may be.

Since the nineteenth century when Librarian, John T. Gilbert, promoted the production of facsimiles of our medieval manuscripts for international circulation, the Library has continued to encourage the publication of papers, monographs, diplomatic editions and facsimiles based on our resources. Since 2002 we have partnered with Irish Script on Screen (ISOS) to bring over 80 of our key Irish-language manuscripts to the web where they are freely accessible. ISOS now has over 5 million accesses a year and rising…

We have placed our Westropp 1916 photographs of Dublin on Europeana, Google and our national repository, the Digital Repository of Ireland.

We have lots of information on our collections and our work on the website – in particular see Special Collections and we regularly run news features on our Library landing page. Our Twitter feed had over 73,000 accesses in February 2016. Visit us @Library_RIA

We hope you will drop in to our blog every now and then and that it will encourage you to explore our resources and to engage with us. We intend to post a blog at least once a month.

Upcoming topics, compiled by different members of our team, will include a feature on Interning at the RIA Library; 1916; a look at the Kevin B. Nowlan archive; WW1 recruiting posters. We shall also invite guest bloggers to contribute to our musings.

We look forward to engaging with you. So, here we are. We log, we blog…