Life
1870-[1924]; b. Ohio, oldest son of Irish Catholic immigrants; collected
books from an early age; ed. Georgetown Univ., reading law at night courses;
later at Harvard; went to Washington as secretary of friend in Senate;
and started his own firm by thirty-six; visited Ireland in 1902; purchased
paintings by Jack and commissioned work from J. B. Yeats, Snr.; brief
affair with Lady Gregory in winter 1911; visited Coole, and became patron
of Literary Revival; corresponded with Jack Yeats; arranged to handle
US copyright of W. B. Yeats’s play Where there is Nothing;
advised Yeats to read Neitszche, 1902; organised Yeats’s American
tour of 1903-04; assisted in establishing short-lived Irish Literary Society
in NY, ending through differences with the Catholic Archbishop; organised
US tour for Douglas Hyde, 1905; offered to arranged US copyright for Synge
and to purchase his MSS; purchased MSS from Joseph Conrad, 1911 and after; assisted Pound, Wyndam Lewis and Eliot; purchased
MS of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) for $100;
contrib. appreciative review to Vanity Fair; pirate edition of
Ulysses destroyed following his litigation; acquired Ulysses
MSS on installments at cost of $1,200, to be sold later at auction
to Simon Rosenbach, in Jan. 1924 while Quinn was terminally ill; sale
catalogue of his books included more than 10,000 items; his papers were
acquired by the manuscript division of the Berg Collection at the New
York Public Library. KUN
Criticism
B. L. Reid, The Man from New York and His Friends (NY: OUP 1968).
Richard Londreville, ‘Jeanne Robert Foster’, Éire-Ireland, 5, 1 (Spring 1970), pp.38-44; see also Irish Book Lover, Vol. 14.
A. N. Jeffares, W. B. Yeats, A New Biography (London: Hutchinson 1988), p.133 [biographical details as above]; see also John Quinn Selected Irish Writers from His Library (Locust Hill Press [2002]).
Robert O’Byrne, feature on John Quinn on occasion of National
Library of Ireland purchase of the MS of Joyce’s "Circe" episode in Ulysses (27 Jan. 2001).
Notes
Peter Kavanagh published from memory MS material from John Quinn’s
papers in New York Pub. Lib. held under embargo till 1988; inc. letters
from Synge, Lady Gregory; also letters to James Joyce.
Quinn’s sale of Joyce’s Ulysses manuscripts and his final illness are remarked upon in Bruce Arnold, The James Joyce Scandal (1991).
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)