Interconnections between Art and Commerce: Literary Prizes, Readers, and the Reading Committee of the Irish Women Writers' Club (1933–1958)

Abstract

ABSTRACT This essay examines the interconnections between art and commerce that lie behind cultural production. Using the case study of the Irish Women Writers’ Club (1933–1958), it explores the political, cultural, and social realms in which alliances are formed and supported, and the intersections between culture and the business of books, art, and politics, reading committees and readers. It extends on recent scholarship which positions women writers firmly at the centre of Irish literary life in the mid-twentieth century, offering new unpublished accounts of the club, their public activities and reading practices, and the machinations behind the reading committee that awarded the literary prize, the Book of the Year, from the period 1936–1939. As progressives, they leveraged their connections, national and international, to maintain a space for female intellectual thought while keeping alive the tradition of women's writing for future generations.