Librarian confident poet's archive intact

UCD librarian Seán Phillips has said he is "fairly confident" no items in the Patrick Kavanagh archive at the college have gone missing.

Mr Phillips was responding to a report by the poet's brother, Peter Kavanagh, that items in the archive he passed to the late Dr Augustine Martin, professor of Anglo-Irish literature and drama at UCD, in 1986 were no longer there.

In correspondence with The Irish Times Peter Kavanagh has said that queries he made in letters to UCD last October,November and December, elicited the information that specified documents he had passed to Prof Martin, following payment of $100,000, were not in the archive at UCD.

However, Mr Phillips said he was "fairly confident" that since the Patrick Kavanagh material came into the library's care - approximately six months after Prof Martin acquired it - none had gone missing.

He said there was no indication that the relevant documents were ever at UCD in the first place or that any went missing while in the care of the college.

When the archive first came into its care in 1986 it was placed in "closed storage" to allow for a space to be prepared for it, he said. When that space was ready a professional archivist was engaged to catalogue the collection and prepare a thorough list, Mr Phillips said. When they checked that list, following Mr Peter Kavanagh's recent queries, they were unable to find the documents he specified.

As it is procedure at the college that documents from the archive can only be accessed through him, Mr Phillips said he was fairly confident that, from the time the material came into their care, there was no indication they had the specified documents in the first place and/or that they went missing while in their custody.

However he said that, as long as there was a question mark, they could not be entirely happy this was the case and they would keep investigating.

Among the documents Peter Kavanagh said had gone missing was one in which Patrick gave him power of attorney; an affidavit from Patrick giving him publication and distribution rights to the work in the Recent Poems collection; a handwritten account by Patrick detailing "the attempt at his murder by Dennis Dwyer"; Patrick's will made on February 28th 1955; Patrick's addition to Prelude "... remember well your noble brother" and one of two copies of the John Quinn Letters: A Pandect.

The money for the archive was raised through a campaign organised by Prof Martin in the mid-1980s. It was backed by the then Catholic primate Cardinal Tomas Ó Fiaich and the presidents of other Irish universities.