[Sir] Edward Sullivan

Criticism

Life
1822-1885 [Sir Edward Sullivan, Bart. of Garryduff; not to be confused with Sir Edward Sullivan, Bart., of Denton]; ed. TCD; co-ed., Kottabos, A College Miscellany, series I Vol. 1-3, new series Vol. 1-2 (Dublin 1869-95); became editor of The Book of Kells facsimile edition (1914), with an introductory description of the scriptorial characters which James Joyce took as the model for his pastiche of Irish paliographical scholarship in Finnegans Wake;, with an introduction that Joyce adopted as one of the chief parody-models for Finnegans Wake (1939); also issued Decorative Bookbinding in Ireland [as Opusculum LXVII in Ye Sette of Odde Volumes] (London 1914). ODNB


[ The Introduction to Sullivan’s Edition of the Book of Kells and an Album of Plates selected
from it can be viewed in Ricorso - as attached. ]

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Works
  • ed., with R. Y. Tyrrell, Echoes from Kottabos (Grant Richards: London 1906).
  • ed., Buck Whaley’s Memoirs, including his journey to Jerusalem, written by himself in 1797 and now first published from the recently discovered manuscript, edited, with introduction and notes, by Sir Edwards Sullivan, Bart. (London: Alexander Moring / De La More Press MCVI [1906]), xliv, 359pp. [see details].
  • ed., Book of Kells described by Sir Edward Sullivan ... illustrated with 24 plates [&c.] (London: The Studio 1914; 2nd edn. 1920; reps. 1986, 1992),) [see details].

Buck Whaley’s Memoirs, including his journey to Jerusalem, written by himself in 1797 and now first published from the recently discovered manuscript, edited, with introduction and notes, by Sir Edwards Sullivan, Bart. [2 vols in 1] (London: Alexander Moring / De La More Press MCVI [1906]), xliv, 359pp. Contents: Preface, [v]-xliv [dated Jan. 1906]; list of ills. [9 + 1 (port facing title port.]; [2], Vol. 1, Dublin 1797 (pp.1-178) and Vol. 2, Dublin 1979 (pp.[183]-337; with Appendix: ‘Extracts from Capt. Moore’s MS Journal’; (p.[339]-48, and Index, [349]-59, [2]. The original edition is shown in colour front. facing the title of Vol. 1. Illustrations incl. port. of Whaley [facing title, vol. 1], No. 86, Stephen's Green, Dublin, xi; The Beaux Walk, xv; Fort Anne, xxiv; Port. of Captain Hugh Moore, xliii; The Binding of the MS Memoirs, xlvii; Sir Robt. Boyd, K.B., 52; Facsimile of a page of Capt. Moore's Journal, 224; William Beckford, 294; Lord Clare [John Fitzgibbon], 331.

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Studio edition
  • The Book of Kells / Described by Sir Edward Sullivan, with 24 colour reprod. from the original pages (London & N.Y.: Studio Publications, 1914), iii-v, ill. [24 lvs. col. pls.], 34x26cm.; Do. [2nd edn.] (London: The Studio Ltd. 1920), vii, 48pp., ill. [xxiv pls.]); Do. (London: Studio 1924, 1925 [3rd Edn.] 1927), viii [xvi], 48pp. ill, [xxiv mounted col. pl., 29cm.; and Do. [another edn.], with a Foreword by J. H. Holden [5th edn.] (London: Studio 1952), xvii, 18-108pp, ill. [23 pls.; col. facs.; 29cm.], and Do. [another edn.] (Studio 1955), 111pp., ill., 4° [30cm.].

Rep. as —

  • The Book of Kells / described by Sir Edward Sullivan, Bart., with additional commentary from An enquiry into the art of the illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages by Johan Adolf Bruun. [rep. of 2nd edn.] (London: Studio Editions 1986), xiv, 138pp., ill. [24 col. plates; Each plate accompanied by leaf with descriptive letterpress; 29 cm.].
 
Modern reprints
  • The Book of Kells: Forty-eight pages and details in color from the manuscript in Trinity College, Dublin, ed. Peter Brown [Librarian] (London: Thames & Hudson 1980; rep. 1989); Do. (NY: Knopf 1980)
  • [indentical cover]
  • The Book of Kells [identical to above; facs. rep. of 2nd edn., 1920; styled 3rd edn.] (London: Bracken Books 1988), xiv, 138pp., ill. [24 lvs. of plates; 28cm.; t.p. verso: ‘This is a facsimile reprint of The Book of Kells, second edition, originally published by The Studio Ltd., 1920, with additional material [...]’.
  • The Book of Kells, [ed.,] Bernard Meehan (London: Thames & Hudson 1994), 95pp., ill. [117 pls., 110 in col.]
  • The Book of Kells (Parkgate Books 1997).
Photo-editions
  • The Book of Kells: An Album of Thirty-six Colour Slides, with an introductor note by William O’Sullivan (Trinity College, Dublin 1967) [red octavo box with 12° booklet, 8pp.; green plastic leatherette slide album.
  • The Book of Kells: Reproductions from the Manuscript in Trinity College Dublin [w]ith a study of the Manuscript by Françoise Henry (London: Thames & Hudson 1974) 230pp., ill. [126 col. pls.; 75 b7w ills.; boxed, with book and box in full tan cloth and gilt title on box and spine. [£350]
  • The Book of Kells. with accompanying vol. of commentary ed. Peter Fox; contribs. Gearóid MacNiocaill, Patrick McGurk, Bernard Meehan & Anthony Cains [Fine Art Facsimile] (Faksimile Verlag Luzern 1990), 383pp. [reproducing 680pp. of orig. TCD Lib. MS 54], ill. 14 colour pls.; ltd. edn. of 1480 copies, Bound in half-kid, linen boards, leather presentation box with silver-plated miniatures; gold embossing [slipcase]; fully stitched on double cords by Burkhwilt Bookbinders; specialist photography by Heinz Bigler Atelier.

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Criticism
Monographs
  • George Otto Simms, Exploring the Book of Kells (Dublin: The O’Brien Press 1988), ill. David Rooney.
  • Brian Kennedy, ed., The Book of Kells and the Art of Illumination (Seattle: Washington UP 2000).
Articles
  • Vern Lindquist, ‘Sir Edward Sullivan’s Book of Kells and Joyce's Finnegans Wake’, in  Éire-Ireland, 27:4 (Winter 1992): pp.78-90.

See also citation under Oscar Wilde, infra.

 

Quotations
Sir Edward Sullivan, Bart., ed., The Book of Kells (London: Studio Press 1914; rep.1920)
Preface
[On Zoomorphic decoration:] ‘No account that might be written of the zoomorphic, or animal, forms introduced in the decoration of the Manuscript could convey any impression of a more effective kind than that given by the plates themselves. At the same time it is well to bear in mind that the true explanation of their unnatural drawing is not to be attributed to the incapacity of the artist. Such deviations from nature as they exhibit are due more [41] or less to the same causes that led to the eccentricities attaching to the human figures represented: in other words, there never was any intention on the artist’s part to depict these animal forms in their natural shapes. Whatever they happen to be, fish, peacock, horse, dog, hare, otter, cat, rat, cock, lizard, serpent, or dragon, they are all in a sense creatures of a world apart, strongly marked with the deliberate unreality of ecclesiastical heraldry; distant relations, as it were, of the lion, the calf, and the eagle, of the Evangelical symbols, and forced into disnatured anatomies and fantastic posturings only to serve the purposes of the artist, and fall in with the general decorative scheme of which they form a symmetrical part. In this way only, according to the tenets of the early Irish School of illumination, could artistic harmony be preserved; and curious as such living forms may be when contrasted with the more correct and altogether natural pictures of animal life in the Continental manuscripts of a later day, it can at least be said that, as compared with the strange creatures we have been long familiar with in heraldry, the fauna of the Book of Kells are not much more extravagant than the singular creatures that owe their origin to the Heralds’ College.’ (pp.41-42.)
 
[On the heraldic nature of the figures;]: ‘A much simpler explanation would seem to be that all the apparently weird figures of either Saviour, saint or man which meet us in the pages of the Book of Kells, not to mention other manuscripts, of about the same period, are, in reality, what might now be termed heraldic. Their being so gives them at once an artistic as well as a theological value. They are heraldic because no other form of pictorially personified humanity could be made to fit in with the decorative surroundings in which they are enshrined; while the deliberate avoidance of any real resemblance to humanity only intensifies the spirit of reverence for holy things possessed by the illuminators. Independently of such reasons, however, it should not be forgotten that the Eastern Church had from an early date laid down very definite instructions in reference to the representation of holy personages; and undoubtedly such instructions in a pictorial form had reached Ireland from Italy and Southern France at the periods when her school of illumination was in its incipient and its progressive state. These Eastern instructions were long afterwards collected into a book called “The Painter’s Guide,” which was compiled at Mount Athos, in Greece, from the works of Pauselinos, a painter of the eleventh century, a volume which ultimately became the text-book of Byzantine Art. [...] Celtic departures from the formalities prescribed by Eastern authority - and they are frequent - would seem to point to the existence of an early traditional treatment of such matters in Ireland which had been followed for perhaps some centuries before the appearance of the Byzantine “Painter’s Guide.” It is certainly easier to think that the portrait figures of the Book of Kells and similar Irish manuscripts were the direct result of some such local tradition than to assume that the gifted illuminators of the marvellously-drawn decorative portions of such works were unable to paint the human form, had they wished to do so, in a more natural way than they have done.’
[ See full copy of the Introduction in this frame, or else in a new window. ]

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References
Dictionary of National Biography
: Sir Edward Sullivan, 1822-1885; first bart., Lord Chancellor of Ireland, mainstay of the English govt.; poss. the father of Sir Edward; b. Mallow, Co. Cork; leading counsel with James Whiteside in Barry Yelverton trial; Attorney General in 1868; Lord Chancellor in 1883; ‘it was mainly at his instance that the important step of arresting Charles Stewart Parnell was adopted ..’ (1881). His library was worth £11,000. Bart., of Garryduff; ed. Echoes from Kottabos. See also Irish Book Lover, Vol. 6.

Hyland Books (Cat. 224) lists Book of Kells, with New Preface (3rd edn. 1930), 24 mounted pls. with guards.

University of Ulster Library, Morris Collection, holds Book of Kells [facs. edn.] (1920).

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Notes
James Joyce and the Book of Kells
: Joyce’s exploitation of Sullivan’s edition of the Book of Kells - which Joyce compared in general to Ulysses (1921), as well as constructing a parody of Sullivan’s prefatory account of its manuscript lettering in the intensely self-reflexive “Letter” chapter of Finnegans Wake (1939), which is copiously treated in James Atherton, The Books at the Wake (1957). Joyce wrote in a letter to Arthur Power:

“In all the places I have been to, Rome, Zurich, Trieste, I have taken it about with me, and have pored over its workmanship for hours. It is the most purely Irish thing we have, and some of the big initial letters which swing right across the page have the essential quality of a chapter of Ulysses. Indeed, you can compare much of my work to the intricate illuminations.”

Sullivan’s preface to the Book of Kells begins with an ornate reference to ‘[i]ts weird and commanding beauty’ - before going on: ‘its subdued and goldless colouring; the baffling intricacy of its fearless designs; the clean, unwavering sweep of rounded spiral; the creeping undulations of serpentine forms, that writhe in artistic profusion throughout the mazes of its decorations; the strong and legible minuscule of its text; the quaintness of its striking portraiture; the unwearied reverence and patient labour that brought it into being; all of which combined go to make up the Book of Kells, have raised this ancient Irish volume to a position of abiding preeminence amongst the illuminated manuscripts of the world.’ (p.1.) It is this and subsequent comments on the manuscript calligraphy which Joyce rendered as ‘the sudden spluttered petulance of some capitalized mIddle; a word as cunningly hidden in its maze of confused drapery as a field mouse in a nest of coloured ribbons’ (120.14-16), and ‘[...] all those red raddled obeli cayennepeppercast over the text, calling unnecessary attention to errors, omissions, repetitions and misalignments’; (120.05-06) - both in “The Letter” chapter of Finnegans Wake (1.4.).

[See the more extended commentary on the Joyce Kells connection at Futurelearn [online]. See also the account of 1.5 ("The Letter") in "a short paraphrase and guide prepared by Danis Rose at the James Joyce Digital Archive [online] - both accessed 24.11.2025. ]

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Master book-binder: Sir Edward Sullivan, Bart. (c.1851-1937) - presumably a relative, is cited as a master book-binder in Nicola Gordon Bowe, ‘Wilhelmina Geddes, Harry Clarke and their part in the Arts and Crafts Movement of Ireland’, in The Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts [DAPA], No. 8 (Miami 1988).