Forgotten Irish writers’ love story revealed through letters
Summary and headline written by AI from the source article. How we work
Margaret Kelleher uncovered a trove of 500 letters between Irish literary couple Padraic Colum and Mary Maguire Colum while researching a new biography.
For four years, Kelleher examined archives in New York and Ireland, ultimately receiving a suitcase of papers from the Colum family’s literary executor, Tony Moore.
These letters, dating from 1907 to 1913, detail the couple’s early lives, ambitions, and evolving relationship amid the cultural changes of early 20th-century Ireland and the literary circles of 1930s Paris and New York. The correspondence reveals Mary Colum was a respected literary critic in the United States, known for her sharp wit and influence on writers like F Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, while Padraic Colum was a successful poet, playwright, and author of children’s stories.
The letters show Mary frequently encouraged Padraic’s career and preserved his writings, anticipating future biographers. Kelleher discovered the couple addressed each other as “cousin,” a literary reference to Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s verse novel Aurora Leigh, which reflected their intellectual connection and allowed for frank communication. The letters also reveal romantic rivalries that strengthened their bond.
After their emigration to the United States in 1914, Mary received two Guggenheim fellowships and Padraic’s death in 1972 was reported on the front page of The New York Times. Kelleher has now donated the letters to Longford County Library and Archives in Ireland, hoping to secure the couple’s place in literary history.
