Table of Contents

Restrictions on access

Unrestricted access.

Terms Governing Use and Reproduction

Information on copyright (literary rights) available from repository. All requests subject to limitations noted in departmental policies on reproduction.

Source

Purchase, 1996.

Citation

[identification of item(s)], Brian Coffey collection, Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University.

Biographical Note

The Irish poet Brian Coffey was born in Dublin in 1905. After secondary education at Clongowes Wood College and in France, he studied science at University College Dublin from 1924-1930. In 1930 Coffey published a collection of poems with the poet Denis Devlin followed by Three Poems in 1933. Throughout the decade he lived in Paris where he was associated with the Joyce circle. During this period he published his poetry in Criterion and Ireland Today. A third collection, Third Person, appeared in 1938. During the war years, Coffey taught school in London. He completed his own doctorate in 1947, and from 1947-1952 he held a teaching position in St. Louis, Missouri, which would later serve as the impetus for his Missouri Sequence. After Denis Devlin's death in 1959, Coffey served as literary executor to the estate and prepared a collected edition of Devlin's poems and the posthumous collection The Heavenly Foreigner. He also prepared a translation of Mallarmé's Coup de dés in 1965. The following year Coffey, in collaboration with John Parsons, published Monster. Coffey's Selected Poemsappeared in 1971 followed by Advent(1975), The Big Laugh (1980), The Death of Hektor(1980), and Chanterelles(1985). Brian Coffey died in 1995.

Scope and Content Note

The Brian Coffey collection includes one bound volume and two scrapbooks in which Coffey has tipped in manuscript drafts of many of his poems dating from ca. 1933 - ca. 1976 and a single box of manuscript drafts and related artwork. Among the published collections represented in the collection are: Three Poems (1933), Missouri Sequence, Monster(1966), Selected Poems(1971), Advent (1975), The Big Laugh (1980), and The Death of Hektor (1980). The largest part of the collection relates to the composition of Monster and the design of the published work.

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Selected Search Terms

Topical Terms

English poetry--Irish authors--20th century.

Poets, Irish--20th century.

Form/Genre Terms

Manuscripts.

Poems.

Occupation

Poet.