Copyright
Caoilfhionn Ní Bheacháin;Published On
2025-04-07Page Range
pp. 91–114Language
- English
Print Length
24 pages
4. Mysteries of the Teresa Deevy Archive
Reconsidering the plays of D.V. Goode
Chapter of: Active Speech: Critical Perspectives on Teresa Deevy(pp. 91–114)
This chapter reconsiders the dramatic works of the pseudonymous D.V. Goode. When the Deevy papers were first catalogued in 1995 for a bibliography in the Irish University Review, the D.V. Goode plays were attributed to Teresa Deevy, and dated to her extended stay in Blackheath in London between 1914 and 1919. A description based on this attribution has persisted to the present day. These scripts, three complete plays entitled 'Practice and Precept', 'Let Us Live', and 'The Firstborn', have not received critical attention to date, and this essay seeks to introduce the texts, categorically redate them, and explore different theories regarding authorship. The fragmentary evidence currently available is tantalising and suggestive, and this essay offers an account of an investigation in progress. It situates this archival conundrum in the context of Irish writers, intellectual networks, archives, and cultural memory, highlighting the consequences of the longstanding neglect of leading women writers and their networks, whose archives are often scattered and fragmented, and their influence and achievements obscured or misunderstood.
Contributors
Caoilfhionn Ní Bheacháin
(author)Associate Professor of Communications in the Kemmy Business School at University of Limerick
Caoilfhionn Ní Bheacháin Mitchell is Associate Professor of Communications in the Kemmy Business School at the University of Limerick. Her current research focuses on intellectual and creative networks between 1880 and 1960, and she has a specific interest in cultural history focusing on publishing and book history, subscriptions, theatre management, and the creative industries in general. She works on the playwright Teresa Deevy, the Dun Emer Guild and Press, and the historian and activist Alice Stopford Green with recent articles appearing in the Journal of Victorian Culture, Women’s History Review, Irish University Review, and the Edinburgh Companion to Women in Publishing.