This work was originally published by Maynooth University in Ireland in
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Letter from James Finn (1877-1922) to May Fay (1897-1976) following their recent engagement. James attempts to cheer May up after he recent illness and writes about the hesitations he had in asking for her hand. James Finn was a civil servant, working in the National Health Service Commission on Mount Street. While neither James nor May were politically active their letters provide a very unique insight into the affairs of Easter Week and its aftermath. James died in 1922 as a result of the flu epidemic, May was pregnant with their fourth child at the time.May Fay became engaged to James Finn in January 1916. Despite the twenty year age gap their letters show a very personal and private insight into courting in early 20th century Ireland. She held on to his letters as her reminder of him. May never remarried and focused her attention instead on her businesses in order to provide for their children.
The data in these XML files was generated based on a data dump from the Magellan database (https://github.com/Maynooth-Center-for-Digital-Humanities/Magellan). Each database record has been converted to a JSON file (https://github.com/letters1916static/letters-data/tree/main/json). The element section of the JSON file contains the TEI-encoded contents of the letters. The TEI XML has been cleaned and made well-formed using a Python script (https://github.com/letters1916static/letters-data/tree/main/src).