In November 1961 an event occurred in Dublin that I think it's fair to claim was of some literary significance. It was the launch by enthusiasts in Trinity of a new bi-monthly literary magazine called The Dubliner, published by a company named New Square after that part of the college. Following the demise of Seán O'Faolain's The Bell and John Ryan's Envoy, there was certainly a gap waiting to be filled.
The first Dubliner was edited by an American, Donald Carroll, who wrote in his editorial of "the risk of immediate extinction". He may not have expected his remarks to prove so prescient. As it turned out, like the swan in Tennyson, he had indeed been "fluting a wild carol ere [ his] death" - though only as editor of The Dubliner, I hasten to add. Carroll was replaced by another Trinity man, Bruce Arnold, who declared in his first issue that he would be maintaining the eclectic outlook announced by his predecessor, while giving primary attention to Irish writing and Irish art.
With Arnold at the helm, the magazine continued. By the seventh issue it had gained a more solid-looking appearance and become a quarterly. This process of consolidation had been assisted by a subsidy generously granted by the Arts Council. But by this time Arnold, who was to become a highly distinguished author, art critic and political correspondent, was developing other interests. The summer 1963 issue of The Dubliner - the eighth - proved to be his last. Editorial control passed into the hands of myself and a friend, Timothy Brownlow - both of us also Trinity graduates. The Dubliner made its first appearance under our joint editorship in spring 1964.
We were fortunate to be taking over the magazine at that time. Writers and publications of this kind have a symbiotic relationship: the magazines require a sustaining flow of poems, short stories, essays and articles, while the writers need the stimulus provided by such outlets. Fortuitously, in the early 1960s a number of talented young poets were appearing on the scene. Five in particular were beginning to stand out. Four were from Trinity: Brendan Kennelly, Michael Longley, Derek Mahon and Eavan Boland. The fifth was Seamus Heaney. All these poets became regular contributors to The Dubliner after Tim and I had taken over. One of Brendan's poems that we published, his impressive My Dark Fathers, was to give its title to a collection which appeared, like the magazine, under the imprint of New Square Publications. It was later included in Brendan's Collection One, brought out by Allen Figgis in 1966. The following year saw the publication by Allen Figgis of Eavan Boland's collection, New Territory, the title poem of which had first appeared in The Dubliner just before it underwent a change of name.
In his first editorial, Bruce Arnold had spoken of the void left in Irish letters by the disappearance of the first Dublin Magazine. That highly regarded periodical had been edited largely as a labour of love by Seamus O'Sullivan (James Starkey) from 1923 until his death in 1958. Tim Brownlow and I saw ourselves as attempting, to the best of our lesser abilities, to fill that gap. We also thought that The Dubliner sounded more like the title of an "about town" type of magazine.
So we sought the permission of Seamus O'Sullivan's widow, the artist Estella Solomons, to rename it after its illustrious predecessor. She invited us to tea at her home in Morehampton Road. There we met an old lady, warm and gracious, though sadly stricken with arthritis. Cups of tea were dispensed by her friend Kathleen Goodfellow and she then listened to what we had to say. The outcome was that our next issue, that of Spring 1965, appeared as The Dublin Magazine: formerly The Dubliner.
The following year there was another cause for celebration - the appearance of Seamus Heaney's first collection Death of a Naturalist, published by TS Eliot's old firm, Faber. Tim and I lost no time in suggesting he might like to give a reading in Dublin to mark the occasion. Nowadays such an overture would probably come into conflict with the publisher's marketing strategy, but at that time, tightly organised PR campaigns with interviews and book signings still lay in the future. So it came about that we booked the Lantern Theatre in a Merrion Square basement for a reading by Séamus, inviting him and his wife Marie to dinner in the Kildare Street and University Club beforehand. This year Heaney, a Nobel Laureate since 1995, was in Cambridge to give the Clark lecture hosted by (Cambridge's) Trinity College, and I went along to hear him again. Probably I'm partial, but for me the Lantern Theatre reading was the more magical occasion.
Tim Brownlow and I continued to produce the magazine until 1969, when other commitments obliged us to look around for a successor. We found one in the former editor of Envoy, John Ryan, who was to run the magazine, perhaps more adventurously than we had, until 1974. I say "more adventurously" because to some people in literary circles our editorial policy was too conservative; there were also those who saw the involvement of so many Trinity people in the magazine as positively incestuous.
I would not for a moment claim that as editors Tim Brownlow and I were beyond reproach. But the main aim of a small magazine operating on a shoestring must be to offer a platform for talented young writers.
The later achievements of the poets we published - in some cases their academic careers too - speak for themselves.
So the Arts Council, advertisers and members of the public who supported our magazine had, I believe, little or no reason to regret their interest or their generosity.