In her editorial to the first issue of Threshold published in February 1957, Mary O’Malley, its founding editor, described the launch of a new literary journal as being “with some hope and a certain temerity”. Her caution may have been justified and even shared by others.
The recent story of literary periodicals in Northern Ireland by the mid-20th century was less hopeful and with less success than elsewhere on the island. O’Malley noted that: “The history of Irish periodicals is not encouraging. Despite high literacy standards and imaginative presentation of general topics, few have survived.”
Threshold would be a new attempt, a new medium in which to “present constructively aspects of the Irish and world scene”. The meeting of the local and the global between the pages of the Belfast-based journal is one of the most intriguing if also underknown of literary periodicals of the 20th century.
Thirty-eight issues of Threshold were published between 1957 and 1990. O’Malley was ambitious in its regularity. Funding the opening issues along with her husband, Pearse O’Malley, before later Arts Council of Northern Ireland funding arrived, the journal was published quarterly initially before finding a more sporadic publication run throughout the 1960s to the 1990s.
O’Malley reported that the first issue in 1957 had been very satisfactory. All 800 copies of the first issue were sold and by May the magazine had 200 annual subscribers including a number of American universities as well as good reviews in Irish media. That issue included a short-story, Ruth, by Mary Beckett, poems from Pearse Hutchinson, an essay by Rudolf Klein on the Gargoyle Theatre and on French and German theatre in London.
Seán Lemass, then Ireland’s minister for industry and commerce, was approached for a contribution based on his recent speech to the Irish Association in Belfast in February 1958 on the topic of the European Free Trade Area, which he duly submitted and which was published in spring 1958. In that issue’s editorial O’Malley noted the effect rising costs, labour restrictions and the increasing influence of political, religious and social groups was having on theatre and the arts in Belfast (pressures which O’Malley and the Lyric Theatre of the time did not escape).
By spring 1961, O’Malley’s editorial presented a crossroads of form and theme. On the one hand, O’Malley notes the legacies of Indian writer Rabindranath Tagore, whose centenary then occurred, but simultaneously O’Malley cites the political division of contemporary Northern Ireland as the reasoning behind an essay by Roy McFadden on the rise and fall of a regionalist writer’s movement in the North. Here also O’Malley adds that in order to develop its medium for creative writing and criticism, guest editors for individual issues would be appointed, a symptom perhaps, of the exhausting workload Threshold weighed upon O’Malley in its first five years.
The first issue not edited by Mary O’Malley was Autumn/Winter 1962, which was edited by John Boyle. One immediate shift (in Boyle’s lengthy editorial) was evident in the tone and theme, very much solely on internal Irish matters, from the place of the Irish language to the depiction of rural Ireland in contemporary Irish writing. This was in sharp contrast to O’Malley’s broadly international outlook and wider intersections of Irish culture and writing with political and often philosophical matters. This 1962 issue included a short story by the former schoolmaster, Brian Friel - The Potato Gatherers.
Roger McHugh edited the subsequent issue and included an extract from the as yet unpublished novel by another Irish school teacher-turned writer – John McGahern. The rotating editorship continued between Roy McFadden, Roger McHugh for a special issue on the 1965 centenary of WB Yeats (to which Mary O’Malley contributed an essay on Yeats’ plays), to Seamus Heaney in 1969, John Montague in summer 1970, and Seamus Deane in 1982.
A new departure came in issue 21, co-edited by Sam Hanna Bell and John Boyd, with a double issue on what he called “an anthology of outstanding short stories, verse and belles letters by Ulster authors, written in the last two decades. It remains one of Threshold’s major achievements.
John Montague’ Summer 1970 issue is also significant – dedicated to Ulster writers reflecting on the Troubles. Its cover design by artist Colin Middleton, presented a deconstructed form of the front grille of an RUC armoured police car, morphing into the shield of the riot shields and truncheons which were all common symbols used to violently subdue marches and protests in Northern Ireland at the time.
Discussing writing from the North during the Troubles, Montague wrote in his editorial that:
“During the previous decade of near silence Threshold kept, as its name suggested, the door on the latch. Now that our woes have become a world-wide concern, it seemed important to produce a special issue to give a more intimate picture of the crisis.”
One major criticism of this issue however, is that of its 20 contributions, all were by men. This gendered selection of writing and commentary was noticeable in Threshold in some later issues and in particularly in the years following O’Malley’s stepping aside as primary editor. Medbh McGuckian’s two poems, The Love Game and Gateposts, featured in 1980; Passages, a story by Anne Devlin (1982); The Black Diamond, a story by Elizabeth Cullinane (1983/84); and Elba, a story by Mary Beckett, which featured in the final issue in 1990 are just some examples. Nevertheless, it is also necessary to point out that after O’Malley, there was never another woman editor of Threshold.
The cover of Threshold also allowed space for visual artists to place their work. The first issues all featured an illustration by Rowel Friers, a Belfast-born cartoonist and artist. Well known for his cartoons depicting scenes of politics and public life during the Troubles, Friers was a highly regarded artist in watercolours and oils and also a keen actor, designing sets for plays at the Lyric Players theatre in the 1950s. The founding cover illustration for Threshold depicted a carved ornate stone doorway into a church-like building, a sacred space through which to enter into the writings within.
Later editions of the journal carried artworks by other leading artists, such as Alice Berger Hammerschlag (an Austrian artist who also designed sets at the Lyric and had artworks exhibited at gallery space), Anne Yeats, Louis Le Brocquy and John Behan.
The Threshold archive at University of Galway Library includes a full run of all published issues, as well as extensive administrative files from its founding, publishing, editing and distribution, as part of the wider O’Malley/Lyric Theatre archive. All issues of the journal have been recently digitised and made available online by Aisling Keane and Giacomo Mengarelli, along with select documents from the wider journal archive. The letters and files reveal a painstaking task and tireless work by O’Malley in particular, in establishing the journal, growing its readership and distribution, responding to writers and working with guest- and co-editors.
The journal and its files and now its digital archive will allow readers to re-engage with a critical body of writing published over five decades, that goes someway to reassuring Mary O’Malley of her “hope and certain temerity” in establishing a new literary journal in Belfast in 1957.
Threshold Journal and Literary Periodicals: Archives and Futures takes place today in James Hardiman Library, University of Galway at 4pm as part of Cúirt. Admission is free.
