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Life
1940-1954; monthly literary and cultural journal founded by Seán O’Faoláinm ed. up to 1946; Peadar O’Donnell, business manager and later ed., 1946-54; Geoffrey Taylor first poetry ed. (with Louis MacNeice taking over, 1946-47); contribs. incl. Brendan Behan, Austin Clarke, Patrick Kavanagh, Flann O’Brien, Frank O’Connor, Liam O’Flaherty, and Mary Lavin; W. R. Rodgers, John Hewitt; Michael McLaverty, et al.; asst. eds. incl. Hubert Butler and Anthony Cronin; under its founding editor and afte, the journal opposed monlithic versions of Irishness and challenged illiberal temperament and measures in Ireland such as censorship legislation of 1929.
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Works
Six monthly issues to each volume, volumes beginning in October and April.
Criticism
Bibl., Rudi Holzapfel, ‘Index of Contributors’ (1970); see also Donal McCartney, ‘Seán O’Faoláin: A Nationalist Right Enough’, in Irish University Review [“Seán O’ Faoláin Special Issue”] (1976), Seán MacMahon, ed., The Best From ‘The Bell’ (1978), and Terence Brown, Ireland: A Social and Cultural History, 1922-1979 (1981).
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Reference
Seamus Deane, gen. ed., Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry 1991), Vol. 3, pp.91-92: only counterweight to
the ideological monolith of independent Ireland; [extracts 101-07], Fnd-ed.
Sean O’Faoláin, 1940-46, 127; Geoffrey Taylor (1900-1956),
one-time literary editor of, 247n; Behan publishes documentary piece about
imprisonment in [Anthony Cronin], 524; Cronin [assistant] editing The
Bell, 529; with the publication of The Bell in Oct 1940, the
sounding of the Celtic note became increasingly discordant, [Gibbons ed.],
562; cosmpolitan and international influence of [Gibbons, ed.] 566, [extracts
from editorial, ‘The Gaelic Cult’, vol 9, no. 3, Dec. 1944,
FDA3 569-73]; James Plunkett visited USSR through an invitation of The
Bell, in 1955 [bio-note & QRY], 1133.
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Notes
There is a set of The Bell annotated by Peadar O'Donnell in the Letterkenny Public Library (information supplied by Kelly-Anne Matthews, PhD Diss. Research, UU 2007).