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Lost and found in the archives: Hannah Lynch and Dimitrios Vikélas Dublin, Athens, Paris: literary crossings and collaborations

2023; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 31; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/09670882.2023.2270522

1469-9303

Kathryn Laing, Iliana Theodoropoulou,

Historical Art and Culture Studies

This essay illuminates a late nineteenth-century literary connection between Ireland and Greece, also revealing hitherto unexplored layers of the vibrant fin-de-siècle salon cultures in Paris and related literary and artistic networks. As a transnational and interdisciplinary collaboration, the essay maps a process of archival discovery in the National Library of Greece, Athens: a significant cache of letters from Hannah Lynch, Irish New Woman, Ladies’ Land League activist, author of a truly international and diverse body of travel writing, cultural commentary and fiction, to Dimitrios Vikélas, iconic figure of nineteenth-century Greece. The discovery of Lynch’s significant textual and photographic presence in the archive amassed by Vikélas, man of letters and scholar, translator, novelist, philanthropist and founding President of the International Olympic Committee, is significant for several reasons: Lynch’s correspondence reveals further details that flesh out the biography of this marginalised writer; the letters also offer insights into the struggles of a “woman of letters” in the late nineteenth-century literary and publishing landscape, documenting where articles are published and sometimes the remuneration; finally, letters in the Vikélas archive from Lynch and those who were part of their shared Paris-centred intellectual networks foreground patronage, collaboration, friendship and underpinning salon culture.