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PEN was founded by novelist Catherine Amy Dawson Scott who envisaged a dinner club where well-known writers could meet socially. The first dinner was held at the prestigious Café Royal in London in October 1921 with 41 writers in attendance, including Joseph Conrad, John Galsworthy and D.H. Lawrence.
Galsworthy became PEN's first president and persuaded a reluctant George Bernard Shaw to join. Shaw complained about the irritation of the guinea a year fee and told him to take twenty guineas and make him a life member.
Lady Augusta Gregory, the dramatist, folklorist and translator, set up the first branch of Irish PEN. However Irish writers of the time proved solitary and wary of discussing their work and it wasn't until 1934, under the auspices of Lord Longford, Sean O'Faolain and Bulmer Hobson that it began to thrive.
In
June 1935 Irish PEN organised a dinner in the Royal Hibernian Hotel to celebrate
the seventieth birthday of W.B. Yeats. As Yeats sat back to enjoy the glowing
tributes paid by his contemporaries, the importance of the dinner was established
and has continued ever since.
Irish PEN is affiliated to International PEN, a worldwide association of writers with over 140 branches in 90 countries. PEN stands for poets, playwrights, editors, essayists and novelists. The organisation exists to promote friendship, freedom of expression, international goodwill and intellectual co-operation between writers from a variety of mediums.
The International PEN Congress was twice held in Dublin in 1953 and in 1971.
Each year Irish PEN nominates an Irish writer for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Following his Nobel Award in 1995, Seamus Heaney was conferred with life membership of Irish PEN.
Meetings of Irish PEN were originally held in Roberts Café in Grafton Street, the office of Dublin Opinion magazine, and in a meeting room of the Royal Dublin Society.
Continuing the tradition, monthly meetings now take place in heart of Georgian Dublin at The United Arts Club, 3 Upper Fitzwilliam Street, Dublin 2. Established and new writers are welcome to come along to hear writers and those involved in publishing, media etc. discuss their work, get involved in debate about contemporary Irish writing, and afterwards relax and have a drink in the bar.
Irish PEN has campaigned and lobbied over the years on subjects such as censorship, the imposition of VAT on books, retention of Section 481 to safeguard our film industry and recently for the retention of the Writers and Artists Tax Exemption Scheme.
