New digital edition of the Lyric's literary journal Threshold launched
Over the course of more than three decades, the Lyric Theatre ran a literary journal, Threshold, which became one of Northern Ireland’s longest-running literary periodicals of the 20th century.
This weekend, a new digital archive of Threshold was launched as part of Cúirt International Festival of Literature in Galway. It will now be available online for everyone to access from University of Galway Library Archives. This heralds an exciting start to the commemorations planned to celebrate the Lyric's 75th anniversary year in 2026.
First published in 1957 by Mary O'Malley, founder of the Lyric Players Theatre Belfast, the journal provided an outlet for leading and emerging writers across poetry and fiction, as well as topical essays, reviews, and criticism for over thirty years. Thirty-eight issues of Threshold were published between 1957 and its final issue in 1990.
Threshold welcomed contributors and guest editors including Seamus Heaney, Mary Beckett, Kate O'Brien, Gerald Dawe, John Hewitt, John Montague, Seamus Deane, among others.
Issues of note include:
- The first issues were edited by Mary O'Malley; the first guest editor was John Boyle in Autumn/Winter 1962. This issue included the first publication of 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- Roger McHugh edited the subsequent issue and included an extract from the as yet unpublished novel by another Irish school teacher-turned writer – John McGahern.
- A special issue on the 1965 centenary of WB Yeats included an essay Mary O’Malley contributed on Yeats’ plays.
- 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’s 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.
- 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. Friers was also a keen actor, designing sets for plays at the Lyric Players theatre in the 1950s. 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.
Jimmy Fay, Executive Producer of the Lyric Theatre, said: “University of Galway Library Archives are providing a wonderful resource for students and enthusiasts of Irish theatre and literature with this welcome online presence of Threshold, and we thank Barry Houlihan and his team for this work. It is an astonishing source of inspiration and another reason to celebrate the long-reaching and all-embracing vision of Lyric Theatre founder Mary O’Malley, on the eve of the 75th anniversary of the Lyric Players”.
The digital archive of Threshold can be viewed at https://digital.library.universityofgalway.ie/p/ms/categories?collection=629
Photo: Jimmy Fay (Executive Producer) and Claire Murray (Head of Development) at the launch of Threshold at NUI Galway