Overview
Compositions (chiefly copies) of and correspondence concerning American poet Richard Selig, with material concerning his wife, Irish singer and harpist, Mary O'Hara.
Dates
- 1952-2009
Conditions Governing Access
There are no restrictions on physical access to most of this material. Partially Restricted: item (118), audiocassette, requires reformatting for access.
This collection is not housed at the Houghton Library but is shelved offsite at the Harvard Depository. Retrieval requires advance notice. Readers should check with Houghton Public Services staff to determine what material is offsite and retrieval policies and times.
Extent
1 linear feet (3 boxes)Includes typescript copies of Selig's poems, prose poems, and short stories, correspondence concerning Selig, printed material, photographs, and an audiocassette of Selig reading his poems in 1952. Also includes a few compositions by others and material concerning Mary O'Hara, Selig's wife and a noted Irish singer and harpist.
Biographical / Historical
Richard Selig was an American poet. Educated at the University of Washington, he was a Rhodes Scholar at Magdalen College (University of Oxford) from 1953-1956. Returning to the U.S. in 1956, he worked in the public relations department of Western Electric Company. Selig died of Hodgkin's disease 14 October 1957 in New York (N.Y.). A volume of his poems was published posthumously in 1962 by the Dolmen Press, Dublin (and made available online by Mary O'Hara).
Mary O'Hara is an Irish soprano and harpist from County Sligo, Ireland. She was introduced to Richard Selig by Irish poet Thomas Kinsella and married Selig in 1956. She moved to America with him; he died 15 months after their marriage. O'Hara continued to tour and record for four years. In 1962, she became a nun at Stanbrook Abbey where she lived for 12 years. O'Hara returned to her singing career in 1974; she retired from performing in 1994. She remarried in 1985, to Pádraig O'Toole; they spent six years in Tanzania where Dr. O'Toole taught and then returned to live in Berkshire, England, on the Aran Islands, Ireland, and in Spain.
Arrangement
Organized in six series:
- I. Compositions by Richard Selig
- II. Compositions by others
- III. Correspondence
- IV. Photographs
- V. Printed material
- VI. Other material
Physical Location
Harvard Depository
Immediate Source of Acquisition
2011M-52. Gift of Mary O'Hara and Padraig O'Toole; received: 2011 October 21.
General note
This collection is shelved offsite at the Harvard Depository. See access restrictions below for additional information.
Processing Information
Processed by: Melanie Wisner.
- Title
- Selig, Richard, 1929-1957. Richard Selig additional papers, ca. 1952-2009: Guide.
- Author
- Houghton Library, Harvard College Library
- Description rules
- dacs
- Language of description
- und
- EAD ID
- hou02413
Repository Details
Part of the Houghton Library Repository
Houghton Library is Harvard College's principal repository for rare books and manuscripts, archives, and more. Houghton Library's collections represent the scope of human experience from ancient Egypt to twenty-first century Cambridge. With strengths primarily in North American and European history, literature, and culture, collections range in media from printed books and handwritten manuscripts to maps, drawings and paintings, prints, posters, photographs, film and audio recordings, and digital media, as well as costumes, theater props, and a wide range of other objects. Houghton Library has historically focused on collecting the written record of European and Eurocentric North American culture, yet it holds a large and diverse number of primary sources valuable for research on the languages, culture and history of indigenous peoples of the Americas, Africa, Asia and Oceania.
Houghton Library’s Reading Room is free and open to all who wish to use the library’s collections.
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