Tying up an Irish-Latvian Loose End
Spinoza, book-plates and research serendipity
A few months ago, I published an academic article about an obscure Latvian literary translator named Sidney Arnold, his radical Irish wife and their shared journey through the clandestine worlds of Irish/Soviet radicalism in the early 1920s.
It’s the kind of article that I suspected would have a stranger afterlife than some of my other writing. It bridges a lot of historical fields; Irish history, Soviet history, Latvian history, and so on.
I left an open question in the article: what happened to Sidney Arnold?
I knew he lived into the 1950s and remained interested in Irish literary culture. My primary interest was in his revolutionary commitments during the 1920s, so I didn’t treat his post-revolutionary life with the same level of research-obsession.
Then, a couple of weeks ago, I received an email from Peter, an antiquarian bookseller. Clearing out boxes of books he purchased years ago, Peter came across a typescript text from the 1950s, a manuscript treatise on the 17th century philosopher Spinoza. The author of the text was Sidney Arnold.
Through Google, Peter found my article on Sidney Arnold. By pure coincidence, mere weeks before this Sidney Arnold book resurfaced in Peter’s collection, I published the first article ever written about Sidney Arnold. An even further coincidence: Peter lives a short walk away from my flat in Belfast.
We spent a fascinating evening making all kinds of connections between my research and his book collection.
The Arnold book was inscribed to the Solomons, a prominent Irish Jewish family with their own connections to the revolutionary period. Interestingly, even in later life Sidney Arnold retained his connections to the immigrant intelligentsia of Ireland.
I was also startled to learn that Peter also had some books from the private library of a woman who is the main subject of an article I am currently writing: the Irish Communist librarian Claire Madden. One book even had her bookplate within the cover.
The funny thing is, these moments of research serendipity are a regular occurrence for me. One of the Irish people from my MA thesis who travelled to the USSR in the 1930s turned out to be from my own small Tipperary town. Parts of his archive were still stashed in a local cupboard. The remnants of the archive of the Irish Communist who was the central character in my PhD ended up in a house that was a short bus journey from my university.
A few times a year, a descendant of someone I have published about will show up in my email inbox searching for more information. Often, they prove more helpful to me.
In one notably viral incident, I was the sender of the email that helped another researcher make an unexpected connection.
Yes, I could start believing in destiny, but it is more grounded to simply acknowledge the roles that the mass availability of digitised text and the boom in family genealogy have played in fostering research connections.
It’s a better time than ever to be a historian of the obscure.
The Self-Promotion Section
Thank you to everyone who came to hear me in conversation with Ben Miller of the Bad Gays podcast at the International Literature Festival of Dublin. It was honestly so much fun and I’m looking forward to a future appearance on the podcast. Watch this space 😈
What I’m Currently Reading
Alison Macleod’s The Death of Uncle Joe - a memoir of office life within the headquarters of the British Communist Daily Worker in 1956, a story of turbulent times, moral wrangling and self-justification. I’m reading this as part of my Claire Madden research (a librarian in the Marx Memorial Library at the time, she makes several appearances) and finding it an enjoyable insight into a time of grave radical soul searching. It’s long out of print, but if that synopsis piques your interest, I recommend finding a copy.