A great deal , it seems. Rosita Boland reports on the sale of private papers and why Ireland lags behind in acquiring those of its greatest writers.
The name of Emory University, in Atlanta, US, may not yet be familiar to the general Irish public, but it is a name we are likely to hear more and more of in the future. Last month, the university acquired 40 years of personal papers and correspondence belonging to Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney. The acquisition included "thousands of letters spanning Heaney's entire career, as well as printed materials, tape recordings and photographs".
Emory now has the largest and most complete international archive of Heaney's papers. However, it has few of Heaney's most significant papers: the four decades of manuscripts of his poems, essays, and translations. It is not difficult to speculate that Emory - along with other major academic institutions on both sides of the Atlantic - would love to attain the rest of Heaney's papers.
Apart from small lodgements to various institutions, including a gift to the National Library of Ireland of the manuscript of Sweeney Astray, Heaney has retained his manuscript archive. Everyone interested in literature - both academics and the general public - must be wondering where those immensely valuable papers will end up.
"I consider my poetry, prose and translations to be my real archive," Seamus Heaney told the Irish Times this week. "At the moment, I have no announcement to make about the future of those papers."
Heaney's decision to allow Emory to buy - for an undisclosed sum - his correspondence is by no means a spontaneous or arbitrary one. Prior to last month, the Special Collections Department of Emory's Robert W. Woodruff Library already had one of the most impressive international literary archives of contemporary Northern Irish poets. It holds manuscripts and papers of Michael Longley (34 boxes, 1964-1992); Paul Muldoon (43 boxes, 1968-1996); Ciarán Carson (21 boxes, 1970-1997); Derek Mahon (26 boxes, 1979-1994); Thomas Kinsella (66 boxes, 1951-1995); Medbh McGuckian (51 boxes, 1969-1994); and Peter Fallon and the Gallery Press (72 boxes, 1969-1997).
"I'm a strong hoarder and was quite reluctant to part with anything," says Heaney. "But there was a lot of pressure to make a decision about my correspondence papers. I taught for 14 years at Harvard and was on the faculty when I won the Nobel. I'm a friend of Helen Vendler. I also have strong connections with Emory, dating back a long time. I gave the Ellmann Memorial Lectures there in 1988, and Chance [the recently-retired president of Emory] became a friend of mine. And when Ted Hughes [a close friend of Heaney] died, his papers went to Emory."
As Heaney points out, "a dormitory of Irish writers were already at Emory". Already lodged in its archival papers were letters written by Heaney to those Northern poets already in the Emory archive, so his letters from them complete and complement several other archives, as well as being of stand-alone interest.
"Half my correspondence was already there. There was an equal pressure operating on me from the Emory side, and from the community of Northern Irish writers, whose papers were already there. It was like standing off from a literary family. It was a bit hurtful and hard from the Harvard viewpoint. In the end, you have to make a decision. It was not easy."
Stephen Enniss is director of Emory's Special Collections and Archives. He refuses to discuss the monetary side, or the university's annual budget for acquisitions, and certainly not what Heaney was paid. The Coca Cola corporation has a connection with the university, and it is known in academic circles to have deep pockets, and to be astute in its pursuit of writers - a strong archive gives invaluable international prestige to a university and attracts researchers.
In the last decade in particular Irish writers have been crossing the Atlantic to take up posts as writers-in-residence in universities, thus establishing lasting contacts within the ever-popular Irish Studies academic world in the US. Emory's most recent acquisition prior to the Heaney correspondence was the papers of novelist Enda O'Brien, including manuscripts of most of her novels and stories, literary correspondence, diaries and photographs.
"I do think Irish institutions should be actively pursuing Irish writers," says Enniss. "There have been opportunities for Irish institutions to approach some of the writers we have and this simply hasn't occurred. From my own perspective, papers should be well cared for and preserved and not lost. That can occur in Ireland - and can also occur outside Ireland."
Last year, the National Library of Ireland (NLI) paid €12.6 million for a collection of James Joyce manuscripts. It begs the question: do we have to wait until Irish writers are dead and their reputations secure before we start investing in Ireland's future archives?
It is unsurprising pressure was put on Heaney in the US for his papers - everyone wants a part of a Nobel poet - but what is unsettling is that he does not seem to have had Irish universities and institutions pro-actively pursuing him.
According to Bernard Meehan, Keeper of Collections at Trinity College, Dublin, "Heaney's papers are not lost to the civilised world. The important thing is that they are in a place where they are looked after properly".
Of contemporary Irish writers, Trinity has bought the papers of novelists John Banville and Jennifer Johnston, and of playwright Tom Murphy. "No one institution can have a comprehensive collection," says Meehan.
Last month, novelist John McGahern donated manuscripts and papers, including an unpublished novel, to NUI Galway.
The term "donation" in academic circles rarely means something given without payment: "gift" is the word used when a writer gives something for free. A writer's manuscripts and papers can potentially be very valuable. It is entirely to be expected that they don't get passed on for nothing, but it is rather strange how coy academic institutions are about acknowledging a monetary transaction, let alone being specific about it. NUI Galway refuses to talk about figures, but Kieran Hoare, archivist at NUI Galway's James Hardiman Library, confirms money was involved in McGahern's case.
"McGahern would be our one and only major contemporary writer in our archive. We approached him. He had been writer-in-residence here, so we had personal contacts with him."
On the subject of Irish papers lodged at Emory, Hoare is philosophical. "The American universities were interested in Irish writers when the resources and capabilities of Irish universities were unable to match them. The way to go for the future is for us to try and make deposit agreements with writers. We have discussed this here in Galway. But then you have accountants saying it wouldn't be a safe investment; that a writer might get writer's block for 15 years and produce nothing. This is the kind of thinking that would stop projects like that."
Some countries have legislation covering the sale of archival papers and manuscripts of writers. In France, for instance, the Bibilotheque Nationale de France the national library, legally has first option on such papers offered for sale by French writers. The library does not get any financial discount - it has to offer the market value - but crucially it gets that invaluable first-option, which puts them ahead of the international university chase and also out of the auction scenario. There is no such similar legislation in the Republic.
"We were aware that Seamus Heaney was interested in placing his papers," says Éilís Ní Dhuibhne, Assistant Keeper of Manuscripts at the NLI. "We are still interested and would hope that the main part of his papers would come to us. I would feel a certain disappointment about his correspondence going to Emory, but Emory approaches writers fairly persistently."
In the last few years, the NLI has bought papers belonging to playwright Brian Friel, short story writer Benedict Kiely, playwrights Marina Carr, Hugh Leonard, and Tom McIntyre and poet Anthony Cronin, along with the Joyce manuscripts. It has an annual acquisitions budget of €1 million.
"The art of the epistle is dying now, with phonecalls and e-mails, so the art of correspondence in future won't be as meaty as it would have been, which makes Heaney's correspondence even more interesting," says Ní Dhuibhne.
The first two archives Emory purchased several years ago - Longley and Mahon - came through dealers. In Ireland, the best-known dealers are Kennys of Galway, whose online shop is at least as busy as its physical premises. Cannily, for years Kennys has routinely requested passing writers, both Irish and international participants at the annual literary festival, Cúirt, to sit down in the shop and sign their books on the spot, sometimes hundreds of them. Kennys don't advertise the fact, but it clearly has both an extensive private archive, and, as a bookshop, finds it lucrative to have a number of signed copies stored to sell on at some future date - on the death of a writer, for example.
"If a library or institution expressed interest in a writer, we'd approach that writer," explains Des Kenny. "We then catalogue the material and value it, and would take a percentage of the total. We're delighted when Irish institutions can afford them, but generally speaking, they can't."
It was Kennys which acted as dealers for the Longley papers at Emory several years ago - the Longley and Mahon papers were the beginning of Emory's major acquisitions of contemporary poets. The Kennys were partially involved in the National Library's acquisition of the €12.6 million Joyce manuscripts in 2002. "We didn't find them but we were asked to value them." Was it their biggest commission? "Yes, obviously," says Kenny.
"A writer's papers are a writer's belongings," says Joseph Woods, director of Poetry Ireland. "It's ultimately up to them what they choose to do with them. Beckett's papers went to Reading University, and there was no outcry about it, because Reading had cultivated a relationship with him over years. In terms of acquisitions, Ireland is like a broken down car competing against the sports car of America. We need to start cultivating an acquisition fund in this country."
To acquire, that is, those archives that are still left. As Heaney remarked this week, "Emory has fished the pool of contemporary Irish poets." Ireland has to hope they don't get the biggest fish of all - Heaney's manuscripts, which represent his life's work.