I have only recently discovered the work of John Broderick and, in particular, The Waking of Willie Ryan (1965). Although he was elected to membership of the Irish Academy of Letters in 1968 and received its annual Award for Literature in 1975, he was, and remains, relatively obscure. John Broderick was a queer writer from Athlone whose literary career began with The Pilgrimage (1961), a book that was banned by the Irish Censorship Board. I thought I’d give a little background on the censorship of books in Ireland and discuss some of his works.

In 1926, the Department of Justice established—and I am not making this up—the Committee on Evil Literature. This committee, being made up of three laymen and two clergymen (one Catholic priest and one Church of Ireland minister), was created “to consider and report whether it is necessary or advisable in the interest of public morality to extend the existing powers of the State to prohibit or restrict the sale and circulation of printed matter.”

In the end, it recommended that the government broaden the definition of “indecent and obscene” in legislation, “so as to make the law applicable to matter indecent in the wider sense of that word and to matter intended to excite sensual passion.” It particularly noted material that might “advocate the unnatural prevention of conception.”

The Censorship of Publications Act 1929 established the Censorship of Publications Board to examine books and periodicals for sale in Ireland. It was this board that banned The Pilgrimage in 1961, specifically for containing “material with the potential to corrupt.”

In the novel, Julia Glynn is the model Catholic wife to her disabled husband, Michael, the richest man in town. He is dutifully tended to by the household manservant Stephen and his nephew, Doctor Jim. As Michael’s condition worsens, their friend Father Victor suggests a pilgrimage to Lourdes.

Mary begins receiving letters detailing her sexual infidelities with Jim. She suspects the “sinister” Stephen as the source of the letters.

There is also the character of Tommy Baggot, a well-known figure in Dublin’s secretive homosexual community, whom Stephen and Michael may have a connection to. The book was published in the United States in 1961 under the title The Chameleons.

Another of Broderick’s novels, The Waking of Willie Ryan (1965), is centred on a queer man. Willie Ryan returns to his home town in “the great central plain of Ireland” having escaped from the insane asylum.

He was committed by his devout Catholic family for 25 years. They never visited him there. The pretext for his commitment was an attack on his sister-in-law, Mary Ryan, the wife of his brother Michael. The truth was, it was his affair with another man.

The book does a magnificent job of depicting the small-town mentality and the hypocrisy of these “devout” individuals. The book was published in the UK.

Also depicting queer characters, The Trial of Father Dillingham was turned down by an English publisher in 1968. This led to significant damage to Broderick’s career and his self-imposed exile from Ireland.

It tells the story of Jim Dillingham, an ex-priest who authored a book arguing against the concept of original sin, which led to him removing his collar. He ends up living in a flat in Dublin with an eclectic bunch of people. There is a homosexual couple, Eddie and Maurice, a retired opera singer and kleptomaniac known as The La, and Eddie’s sister, Grace, a woman to whom Jim was attracted before becoming a priest. His friendship with this bunch teaches him to be more tolerant of human failings.

John Broderick, who also wrote reviews and articles for newspapers and magazines, was an outspoken opponent of censorship. For example, he criticised the censorship of Lee Dunne’s Paddy Maguire is Dead (1972), stating that, “it is criminal that people can have the power to ban such a book.”

Broderick was asked later in life if he appealed The Pilgrimage’s ban. He responded, “I don’t think you can appeal to people who are as stupid and narrow-minded as that.” He concluded, “I didn’t think they had that moral right, so it would never occur to me to appeal.”

In 2003, queer Irish author Colm Tóibín commented on the censorship of John Broderick, and particularly the impact that The Pilgrimage and The Trial of Father Dillingham (later published in 1974) would have had on Irish society: “They would have made a difference in Ireland. They would have filled a silence about homosexuality that was almost total. It was not merely that homosexual acts between men were illegal; they were unmentionable.

“The absence of Broderick’s books meant that rich and complex images of gay people produced by a talented novelist were not available. It was not as though there were other Irish authors dealing with these subjects in the 1960s.”

Madeline Kingston, who wrote a biography of Broderick, Something in the Head, the Life and Works of John Broderick (2004), says of The Trial of Father Dillingham: “Had this novel been accepted by a publisher in 1968, it might have given the author’s career an impetus that would have saved him the ‘lost’ drinking years that preceded the 1973 publication of An Apology for Roses.” (Broderick did not have a novel published between The Waking of Willie Ryan (1965) and An Apology for Roses (1973)).

Broderick lived out his final years in Bath. He died in 1989. Following his death, he bequeathed his estate to the Arts Council for “the benefit and advancement of the Arts in Athlone.”

In 2007, Lilliput published Stimulus of Sin. This contains a selection of Broderick’s non-fiction writings along with some previously unpublished fiction. I am hoping this piece entices people to seek out his writings, as I feel they deserve a larger place in Irish literature.

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