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    • Posts Tagged ‘Patrick Kavanagh’

    KAVANAGH’S TARRY FLYNN INSCRIBED TO BRENDAN BEHAN MAKES €18,000

    Wednesday, September 3rd, 2025

    PATRICK KAVANAGH – TARRY FLYNN WITH AN INSCRIPTION TO BRENDAN BEHAN MADE €18,000 AT HAMMER

    An historic 1949 edition of Tarry Flynn by Patrick Kavanagh made a hammer price of €18,000 at a two day book sale by Purcell Auctioneers in Birr today. Published in New York by Devin Adair it is the actual copy used in an infamous court case involving Patrick Kavanagh and Brendan Behan.  Kavanagh brought a libel case against The Leader magazine in 1952, and Behan was a key figure in his downfall. During the 1954 trial, Kavanagh, under oath, denied knowing Behan, but this was disproven when the defense produced this copy of Tarry Flynn inscribed by Kavanagh to Behan. Kavanagh lost the case. The inscription on the inside cover reads: “For Brendan, the poet and painter, on the day he decorated my flat, Sunday 12th, 1950.”

    A first edition of At Swim Two Birds by Flann O’Brien published in 1939 by Longmans made a hammer price of €8,800.

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    PATRICK KAVANAGH DEATH MASK AT CORK AUCTION

    Friday, January 22nd, 2021

    A death mask of Patrick Kavanagh by the Cork sculptor Seamus Murphy comes up at Hegarty’s online auction in Bandon on January 31. Etched with the name of the poet and dated 1967 it is estimated at €6,000-9,000. The lot is accompanied by with a collection of personal correspondence between the the artists wife Maighread and well known collector Barbara Vance who was married to Douglas Vance, general manager of The Metropole Hotel in Cork from 1944 – 1985. Two other plaster examples of this mask have are recorded, one at The Writer’s Museum, Dublin, the second at The Patrick Kavanagh Centre, Monaghan.

    SEAMUS MURPHY RHA (1907-1975) – DEATH MASK OF PATRICK KAVANAGH (1904-1967). UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR 5,100 AT HAMMER

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    TARRY FLYNN AND AN IRON AGE STONE HEAD AT WHYTE’S

    Monday, May 4th, 2015

    With everything from an Iron Age stone head to a copy of Tarry Flynn signed by Patrick Kavanagh Whyte’s sale of history and literature in Dublin on May 9 lives up to its name.  Tbe catalogue, which is online, lists 399 lots. Lot 385, Tarry Flynn, published by the Devlin Adair Company, New York, 1949 is estimated at 150-200. It is inscribed “with best wishes to whoever reads it”.  The Iron Age stone head, in granite, dates from 500 BC to 500 AD and has an estimate of 3,000-5,000.  A 1788 grant of a bounty of £100 signed by King George III  is estimated at 150-200 and a Shelmalier Cavalry, Co. Wexford cross belt plate has an estimate of 1,500-2,000.  There are military medals, militia badges, regimental badges, postcards, weapons, uniforms, and a collection of 1916 newspapers reporting on the Rising and its aftermath in an auction that is brimful of interest.

    An Irish Iron Age stone head (3,000-5,000)

    An Irish Iron Age stone head (3,000-5,000) UPDATE: THIS WAS UNSOLD

    An inscription by Patrick Kavanagh on Tarry Flynn.

    An inscription by Patrick Kavanagh on Tarry Flynn.  UPDATE; THIS MADE 1,000 AT HAMMER

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    THE GREEN FOOL BY PATRICK KAVANAGH AT KERRY BOOK SALE

    Monday, September 12th, 2011

    The Green Fool by Patrick Kavanagh. UPDATE: THIS WAS UNSOLD

    A first American edition of The Green Fool by Patrick Kavanagh (1904-67), one of Ireland’s best loved poets, features at a book sale in  Tralee on September 24.  Published by Harper and Brothers, New York,  the autobiography captures the essence of Irish rural life of the period.  It was controversial too. One passage refers to  visit  to the home of Oliver St. John Gogarty and meeting a woman who he took to be either a wife or mistress. Gogarty sued and was awarded £100 damages by the court and the book was withdrawn from circulation.

    Patrick Kavanagh was born on 21 October 1904, in Mucker townland, Inniskeen parish, Co. Monaghan, the son of James Kavanagh, a small farmer with sixteen acres who was also a cobbler, and Bridget Quinn. He attended Kednaminsha National School from 1909 to 1916 and worked on the family farm after leaving school. His earliest poems were printed by the Dundalk Democrat and Weekly Independent, in 1928. Three  more were printed by George Russell in The Irish Statesman during 1929-30. In 1931 he walked to Dublin to meet Russell, who introduced him to Frank O’Connor. “Ploughman” and Other Poems was published by Macmillan in 1936; soon after he moved to London in search of literary work but returned to Ireland when he failed to make a living.  Yet when The Irish Times compiled a list of favourite Irish poems in 2000 it included ten by Kavanagh in the top fifty. This was exceeded only by Yeats.

    The sale at Kerry Auction Rooms, Moyderwell, Tralee, on September 24 includes the collection of  the late Eleanor Scanlan of Listowel, closely associated with Writers’ Week. There are first editions by Irish authors in book English and Irish, with many signed by the author.

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