Eleanor Knott, MRIA, 1886-1975
Eleanor Knott Collection
The papers of Eleanor Knott, distinguished Irish scholar.
Eleanor Marie Knott, MRIA, 1886-1975, was an early Irish scholar and academic. She studied old Irish at the School of Irish Learning in Dublin where her mentor was R.I. Best and she was later involved in the administration of that school. She contributed articles to Sinn Féin and The Irish Peasant and from 1911 onwards worked on the Dictionary of the Irish language for the Royal Irish Academy. She pursued an academic career at Trinity College Dublin, was appointed Professor of early Irish at that university in 1939 and was one of the first women elected to the Royal Irish Academy in 1949. She took an active role in publishing and documents arising from her joint editorship of Ériu are plentiful in this collection. Her correspondence and notes also throw light on her own research into early Irish poetry and her publications such as The bardic poems of Tadhg Dall Ó hUiginn, An introduction to Irish syllabic poetry and Irish classical poetry. She was also engaged in work to simplify the spelling of Irish and the collection contains accounts from the Society for the Simplification of the Spelling of Irish for the years 1910-1912 as well as correspondence on the same subject.
For a catalogue of this collection, Special List A039, please click here