Sir, - I am researching and writing the biography of the writer Ethel Mannin for publication in the year 2000, to celebrate the centenary of her birth.
Ethel lived near Clifden in the late 1930s and early 1940s. During those years she was also a regular visitor to Dublin, where she numbered Yeats, Maud Gonne and Hanna Sheehy Skeffington among her friends. Two of her most famous books are closely associated with the Clifden area: Connemara Journal (an account of her stay there); and Late Have I Loved Thee (her best-selling novel, which is partly set there).
In all, she wrote 102 books. Late Have I Love Thee was dedicated to her friend the late Isabel Foyle, of Foyle's Hotel in Clifden; Connemara Journal was dedicated to Maude Gonne McBride.
During her time in Ireland Ethel Mannin made many close friends; some of them still living. I would be very pleased to hear from anyone who knew her during those "Irish years" and might kindly afford me access to any memorabilia in their possession. Or, as in the case of Isabel Foyle, from the sons and daughters of those who knew her, and who may, as children, have met the writer themselves. - Yours, etc.,
Bill Long,
Bellevue Avenue,
Glenageary,
Co Dublin.