The James Clarence Mangan Collection

James Clarence Mangan (1803-1849) is recognized today as a major Irish poet of the nineteenth century. Mangan worked for many years as a clerk and suffered from melancholy and alcoholism; he died of cholera in poverty and neglect.

This collection, purchased from De Burca Rare Books in 1997, is composed of books by and about Mangan, many periodical issues in which his poetry appeared, his free translations of Irish, German, and other languages, and numerous other literary works and ephemera of the period.

Ten books by Mangan are present in 42 variant issues, editions, or bindings, and 21 books are about him. The thousands of photocopies in the collection include all of Mangan's correspondence and the page-proofs of the seven-volume Mangan edition to be published by the Irish Academic Press. Periodicals in the collection include (among others):