Typewriter

Gaelic League typewriter made by Underwood Typewriter Company, New York

Founded in 1893 by Gaelic scholars such as Eoin MacNeill and Douglas Hyde, the Gaelic League was dedicated to the revival of the Irish language.
This typewriter was the first with Irish language characters. These characters were specific to early 20^th century written Irish. On this machine Seamus MacConglinne (1892-1979), the then Secretary of the Gaelic League, typed letters sent by the Irish Republic to the British government during the Anglo-Irish Treaty negotiations in 1921. These letters were dictated by Séan T. O’Kelly (1896 –1994).
The typewriter highlights the rise of Gaelic culture as an expression of a unique Irish identity. The Gaelic Revival eventually led to the push for Irish independence.

Object Number: HE:EW.4495

More Information:
Crooke, Elizabeth, Politics, Archaeology and the Creation of the National Museum of Ireland: An Expression of National Life. (Irish Academic Press, 2000)
Fowler, Don D. (1987) ‘Uses of the Past: Archaeology in the Service of the State’. American Antiquity. Vol 52. No. 2. Pp. 229-248.
History Ireland Vol. 19, No. 2 (March/April 2011), p. 66 (1 page)
Hyde, Douglas. “On the Necessity for the de-Anglicizing of the Irish People”
Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium Vol. 10 (1990), pp. 88-145
Teehan, Virginia. “Celtic Renaissance.” Irish Arts Review (2002-) 33, no. 1 (2016): 80–81. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24891719.
Trigger, Bruce G. (1984) ‘Alternative Archaeologies: Nationalist, Colonialist, Imperialist. Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. Vol. 19. No. 3.