Terence O’Reilly: A Scholarly Life

In the months before he died in November 2023, Terence (Terry) O’Reilly wrote some notes reflecting on his lifetime of scholarly work, much of which was spent as Professor of Spanish in University College Cork. ‘The genre I cultivated in my writing’, he wrote, ‘was the academic essay, an artform I saw as neglected but capable of beauty. I wrote impersonally and for others, but at a deeper level I was writing for myself; and I was the main beneficiary of what I learned.