Born: 20 January 1924, Ireland
Died: 6 January 2017
Country most active: Ireland
Also known as: Katherina Dardis
This biography is republished from The Dictionary of Irish Biography and was written by Niav Gallagher. Shared by permission in line with Creative Commons ‘Attribution’ (CC BY) licencing.
Dardis, Katherina (‘Rena’) (1924–2017), publisher, was born on 20 January 1924 in Kilkenny, the second of three girls and two boys (Margaret, Christopher, Rachel and John) to Christopher Patrick Dardis, an inspector of national schools, and his wife Sara Teresa Dardis (née Conwell). When Dardis was seven, the family moved to 45 Palmerston Road, Rathmines, Dublin, where their triplets were born, and Dardis remained in the family home with her older sister Margaret until ill health forced her to leave in 2009. Her parents were spartan in their habits, and her father in particular remained distant from the children throughout their lives. Her mother too, had old-fashioned views of child-rearing – a maid was brought with the family from Kilkenny to mind the children, and one year she declared Christmas ‘pagan nonsense’ and cancelled the celebrations. Following the move from Kilkenny, Dardis attended St Louis high school in Rathmines, and from September 1935 attended Loreto College, St Stephen’s Green as a day pupil. Although Dardis sat the leaving certificate in 1941, she was discouraged from going into third level education. Both parents, but especially her father, were sceptical of the value of education for girls and so she was encouraged to gain practical office skills, learning typing and shorthand. Within a year of leaving school, she joined Guinness as an office clerk, but this lasted only a period of months as she realised her prospects for advancement were limited. She would later observe that ‘[A career is] almost more important for a girl than for a man. Every girl should have the backing of a career before she gets married’ (Irish Press, 21 Aug. 1964).
Dardis had enjoyed writing from an early age – she and her sister Margaret composed stories or articles for imaginary periodicals as teenagers, and from childhood she maintained a daily diary – so when she left Guinness she looked for a more creative outlet that would also pay a reasonable wage. She initially worked as secretary to Jack Tate, managing director of ARKS Advertising, where she amused herself by writing imaginary alternative copy for clients, but when it became clear that advertising offered both a reasonable salary and an outlet for her creativity, in 1943 she took a course in publicity and advertising at the College of Commerce, Rathmines, taught by Frank Padbury. The first course in advertising in Ireland had been introduced by the college (then known as the Rathmines Municipal Technical Institute) in 1929/30 with Padbury, one of Ireland’s foremost advertising copywriters, as one of two course lecturers. Padbury recommended Dardis for a job as a copywriter before she had even completed the course and she joined Janus Advertising in 1945.
Dardis worked at Janus for fifteen years, where she learned all aspects of advertising, from layouts to copywriting. She excelled at the firm, where she was regarded as a fashion specialist. Her sister Margaret was also regularly commissioned by the agency for her artistic talents – she had studied art in the Académie Julian in Paris and at the time was considered one of Dublin’s best fashion artists – and the sisters often worked together, including on the Arnott’s account. In 1960 Dardis joined the advertising agency O’Kennedy-Brindley where she helped generate the ‘creative “fizz”’ the agency enjoyed during the 1960s (Oram, 222). In recognition of her talents, including a major award for copywriting at the 1964 Institute of Creative Advertising best sellers’ exhibition for a Waterford Crystal advertisement, she was appointed to the company’s board of directors in July 1960. A woman with a successful professional career was quite rare in 1960s Ireland, something Dardis acknowledged in an interview with the Irish Press in August 1964: ‘I wouldn’t say I’m the only woman director of the advertising agency, but I think I’m the only one working on the creative side’ (21 Aug. 1964).
From 1969 to 1971 Dardis was president of the Institute of Creative Advertising and Design, though by that time she had found another outlet for her creativity. Sometime before 1962 she met Dan Nolan, managing director of the Kerryman and one of the founders of the Rose of Tralee festival, at an event in the Royal Dublin Society (RDS). They established an immediate connection – with his broad knowledge and understanding of Irish history and society, as well as an inexhaustible repertoire of amusing anecdotes, Nolan was the perfect counterfoil to Dardis’s more serious demeanour. However, Nolan was also married with children; as divorce was not then legally permitted, Dardis and Nolan’s relationship was by necessity extremely discreet.
In late 1961 Dardis and Nolan launched Anvil Books Ltd, predominantly as a vehicle for publishing non-fiction accounts of Ireland’s revolutionary era. (In 1947 and 1948 the Kerryman had published the Fighting story series, a collection of four books documenting the war of independence in Cork, Kerry, Limerick and Dublin.) Initially based in Tralee, Co. Kerry, Anvil’s first publication was a reissue of Rebel Cork’s fighting story, with a print run of 10,000 copies, followed by Limerick’s fighting story (1966) and Kerry’s fighting story (1966). Other notable titles published by Anvil include Dan Breen’s My fight for Irish freedom (1964), Seán Cronin’s The McGarrity papers (1972), Ernie O’Malley’s civil war memoir The singing flame (1978) and Tom Barry’s Guerrilla days in Ireland (1981). Anvil’s fiction list included Tom McCaughren’s In search of the liberty tree (1994), set during the 1798 rebellion. In addition to history and memoir, Anvil published non-fiction such as Caroline Walsh’s Homes of Irish writers (1982), and reissued Maura Laverty’s seminal cookbook Full and plenty (1985).
Building on her experience in advertising and as a writer, Dardis proved to be an excellent editor who knew how to connect with authors and present their ideas to the public. Operating in an era when fewer books were published, Dardis believed that Anvil’s books needed sustained publicity – ideally for more than a year – to plant the title in the public’s mind. When Dermot O’Donovan – author of the children’s book Silas rat (1985) – proved reluctant to engage in publicity, Dardis arranged the recording of a seven-inch single of the same title, based on the book and performed by Freddie White and Phil Lynott. Later in the year, when she was invited onto a children’s programme to talk about the book, she had four children (including her nephew Christopher Dardis) dress up as rats for the cameras.
After Nolan’s death in December 1989, Anvil Books continued under Dardis’s management, publishing Niall Harrington’s memoir A Kerry landing (1992), which had been in the works since 1978. She also continued to manage the Children’s Press, an imprint of Anvil Books. The idea for an imprint exclusively for children’s material originated with author Tony Hickey, who noted that that there was no fiction for Irish children set in contemporary Ireland – children’s fiction was either imported, or belonged to a previous age. He approached David Collins, then literary officer at the Arts Council, and Dardis, with whom he had worked on his book The matchless mice (published in 1979 by another Anvil Books imprint, the Geraldine Press). Together they applied for, and were granted, Arts Council funding to establish the Children’s Press, with the aim of publishing contemporary fiction for Irish children. Based in Rathmines, the Children’s Press initially commissioned works from well-established Irish writers but, as it gained traction, began publishing a new generation of Irish authors. The press’s stated aim was for books with plot, character and wit: author Sarah Webb had her debut in 1997 with Kids can cook, and other titles included Terry Hassett Henry’s The witch who couldn’t (2001), Yvonne MacGrory’s The secret of the ruby ring (1991), which became a television series, and Tom McCaughren’s Children of the forge (1992). Dardis also wrote books for the Children’s Press, but under a nom de plume to avoid accusations of unfair dealing. In 1996 Dardis, Carolyn Swift and Tony Hickey were awarded the annual Children’s Books Ireland award in recognition of their outstanding contribution to children’s literature.
In 2005 Dardis largely stepped back from Anvil and the Children’s Press, and her sister Margaret took over as editorial director. Four years later when she suffered a stroke and was admitted to Leeson Park nursing home, the publishing titles were sold to Mercier Press, which continues to reissue many of the titles published by Anvil, including the Fighting story series. Dardis died on 6 January 2017 and was buried in Deansgrange cemetery following a funeral mass.