Goodbye George Berkeley, hello Eavan Boland: why has Trinity renamed its biggest library?

George Berkeley, born in Kilkenny in 1685, was a theologian and philosopher who spent most of his life studying and working in Trinity. The decision to cease the library’s association with the philosopher was taken due to his owning of slaves and a plantation in Rhode Island. Furthermore, Berkeley sought to advance ideology in support of slavery and racial discrimination.
Trinity’s largest library. If you’ve stepped foot on the college campus, you are probably familiar with the brutalist, concrete mass looming over the Arts Block. The one beside the gold orb. This library is one of three making up the BLU complex – the (former) Berkeley, now Boland, Leckey and Ussher. College admin can breathe a sigh of relief as the library’s new name also conveniently begins with a B, so the BLU moniker is here to stay.
[ Eavan Boland, who wrote about women’s lives, is a better fit for Trinity than slave-owning BerkeleyOpens in new window ]
Boland, who died in 2020, was a Trinity graduate who emerged as one of the foremost female voices in Irish literature during her long career as a poet. She wrote 11 poetry collections, an award-winning essay collection and prose writings. Her first two collections, 23 Poems (1962) and Autumn Essay (1963), were published before she was 20 years old. Several of her collections, including In Her Own Image (1980), Outside History (1990) and Domestic Violence (2007) explore historical and contemporary female identity. Women’s experiences were central to her work.
In 1967, Boland began work as a junior lecturer at Trinity, and in 1989 she returned as a writer fellow in the Arts Council residency hosted by TCD’s School of English. In 1996 the poet was appointed to Stanford University, where she directed the creative writing programme.
Shortly before her death, Boland was commissioned by the Irish government and the Royal Irish Academy to write a poem commemorating the centenary of women’s suffrage in Ireland, which she read before the United Nations General Assembly in 2018. She named that poem Our Future Will Become the Past of Other Women.
The decision was ultimately in the hands of the Trinity Legacies Review Working Group, which took into consideration “evidence-based submissions”. In 2021, a letter to this newspaper cosigned by Mary Robinson and others called on Provost Prof Linda Doyle to dedicate a space on campus to the memory of Boland. Other suggestions were voiced during a debate at Trinity’s College Historical Society (the Hist), including the Oscar Wilde Library, the Jonathan Swift Library and Freedom Library.