[Robert Lynd, Irish journalist and essayist at whose house James Joyce held his wedding reception.] Part of Corrected Autograph Draft of essay on ‘the Irish comic spirit’and ‘the Irish tradition’ in literature.

See his entry in the Oxford DNB. Unsigned, but in Lynd’s hand and from the Lynd family papers. 6pp, 4to, on six leaves of ruled paper, twenty-six lines to a page. In fair condition, lightly aged, with dog-eared corners. Lynd’s handwriting is execrable, and he employs a number of abbreviations of common words, such as ‘and’, ‘the’, ‘of’. Begins: ‘[...] found expression in literature. / As I have suggested, however, it is in the art of conversation rather than the art of literature that the Irish comic spirit has found its fullest expression. [...]’ Lynd’s discussion brings in Congreve, Shaw, Standish O’Grady, Douglas Hyde, O’Higgins. Ends: ‘[...] he began to look through the books in the library and happened to open O’Halloran’s History of Ireland in three volumes. It was the first History of Ireland into wh[ich] he had ever looked. It is then t[hat] his imagination got the first impulse and pluned it back among the gods & heroes of Ireland. No man has done more to interpret those gods & heroes to the imagination of modern Irishmen & to remind them of the glorious [?] & the Irish drama. Who has ever written more nobly of the creations of those early writers?’ The passage ‘& to remind them [...] Irish drama’ is lacking in the text as published on pp.160-161 of ‘The Irish Bookman’, vol.13 (1922).