Irish Books Research Articles

Irish Books to Move Us

Irish Books to Move Us

Brought to Book: Print in Ireland, 1680–1784 by Toby Barnard

Reviewed by: Brought to Book: Print in Ireland, 1680–1784 by Toby Barnard Ian Higgins Toby Barnard. Brought to Book: Print in Ireland, 1680–1784. Dublin: Four Courts, 2017. Pp. 395. €C50. Brought to Book is an account of what was written, printed, published, possessed, and read beginning in Restoration Ireland and ending in 1784, when a new law curtailed the presses. It magisterially achieves its ambition to retrieve the social, financial, and human contexts of print in Ireland in this period. The book does not have an overt overreaching argument, being more an anatomy of the print culture, but it draws out implications from the vast collection of materials surveyed. The arrangement of the book is partly chronological, geographical, and thematic. Chapters address the book trade, writers, and readers in the 1680s, in Dublin from 1690 to 1784, and in the North and South. There are chapters on education, and on how print reflected on the Irish past, the present, and the future. A chapter focuses on print and on various religious confessions. The chapters on the literary print culture, "Entertainments" and "Writers and Readers," will be of particular interest to readers of The Scriblerian. Each chapter is densely packed with information and the range of subjects covered is vast. Brought to Book is a work of extraordinary archival excavation and erudition. It draws on the quantitative possibilities enabled by the ESTC, but its detailed descriptions and rich assemblage of references derive from a scholarly lifetime in the archives and display its author's astonishing command and recall of primary sources in print and manuscript and of the extant scholarly literature. This is a study of Ireland's Anglophone print culture, not of the indigenous, predominantly oral, Irish-language culture of the native Catholic and Jacobite majority. For that culture, and for the small corpus of Irish-language printed works, the reader must turn to the work of other scholars referred to in the footnotes. Mr. Barnard observes that "alongside lively literary cultures in English, the vitality and variety of those in Irish flourished." One of the many paradoxes pointed to in this book is that while printing in the period was in the language of the victors, older nonprinted modes of communication remained salient and reached where print did not. The familiar arguments—commercial, technical, and political—are offered to explain why there was little printing in Irish. The oral culture of the monoglot Irish Catholic majority was not linked with literacy in Irish. The Irish population was mostly poor, so a commercial market for Irish books was deemed unlikely. It was also believed that standard Roman type was not appropriate for Irish characters, which required a special Gaelic type, so Irish presented printers [End Page 179] with technical difficulties. The Irish language was associated by the state with disaffection, rebellion, and barbarism. Mr. Barnard does report efforts to bring the vernacular into print in bilingual texts and considers such publishing events as The Reliques of Irish Poetry (1789) by Charlotte Brooke. But English was the language of print in this period, and print "consolidated and deepened the advance of English, completing what government, law, bureaucracy, trade, the Churches and education encouraged or decreed." The "permeation of the English language did not, however, make Ireland English." Authors who sought publication in print wrote in English, and those who wanted payment for their work and wider notice sought publication in England (since between 1710 and 1800 copyright existed for writers published in England but not in Ireland). Mr. Barnard's account of English print culture in Ireland generally eschews exaggeration and encourages caution, proportion, and accuracy. The assumed importance of print is qualified, questioned, or queried in his often skeptical account of its impact. After all, print failed to make the Irish English or to convert the Catholic majority to Protestantism. Mr. Barnard reminds us of "the continuing power of talk, recitation, song, spectacle, ritual and seeing to reach where print could not." The account of the notable Dublin bookseller John Smith, active in the early and middle eighteenth century, is illustrative of Mr. Barnard's cautious consideration. Smith had radical associations and sold Whiggish material, but...

Clavis litterarum Hibernensium. Medieval Irish books and texts (c. 400-c. 1600) by Donnchadh � Corr�in (review)

North American journal of Celtic studies Vol. 3, No. 1 (May 2019) Copyright © 2019 by The Ohio State University REVIEW ESSAY PATRICK WADDEN Donnchadh Ó Corráin. 2017. Clavis litterarum Hibernensium. Medieval Irish books and texts (c. 400—c. 1600). ISBN 978–2–54857–9. Turnhout: Brepols Publishers. clxiv + 1932 pages. €875. In compiling Clavis litterarum Hibernensium (henceforth CLH), Donnchadh Ó Corráin sought to provide an overview of the literary output of Irish authors and scribes at home and abroad during the medieval period so that its extent and quality might be assessed (vii).1 His estimation that this undertaking was ‘difficult’ hardly does justice the vast ambition of the project (vii). Even a brief perusal of this work demonstrates the quantity and quality of the medieval Irish literary achievement in both Latin and the vernacular and across a variety of genres. That he has largely achieved his goal is testament to the breadth and depth of Ó Corráin’s knowledge, built over the course of a career spanning nearly half a century. The result of his labor of love is a landmark accomplishment that speaks in important ways about the current status of the discipline and will be valued by future generations of students and scholars alike. The three hefty volumes in which it has been published have something for everybody, including critics. After a preface whose brevity masks its substance, and a lengthy bibliography, the catalogue lists more than 1365 individual items divided into 32 sections, usually according to genre, but occasionally according to the author or location with which they are associated. Other groupings are a little less obvious or more specific, one such being Section 9 ‘Irish scholars and Greek in the West’. These sections are listed in roughly chronological—though of necessity overlapping and imprecise—order, beginning with the earliest surviving examples of Irish literacy in the form of epigraphy and progressing 1. Roman numerals refer to page numbers in the preface. Arabic numerals in bold font refer to items listed in CLH. Arabic numerals in plain font refer to page numbers. Patrick Wadden [patrickwadden@​ bac​ .edu] is Associate Professor of History at Belmont Abbey College, North Carolina. His interests focus on the political and cultural links that existed between the different part of the Gaelic world and on the place of the Gaels in the broader Insular and European worlds of the Middle Ages. 86 North American journal of Celtic Studies through a catalogue of medieval texts and manuscripts dating from the fifth to the sixteenth century. The majority of the individual items listed are texts. Most entries include an incipit, an overview of the manuscript tradition, a list of editions and facsimiles, and a bibliography of pertinent secondary literature arranged chronologically. Other items given their own entries include inscriptions and manuscripts, whose entries differ somewhat in content. Those on manuscripts include convenient lists of contents for cross-reference, for example (816–822). Additionally, there are general bibliographies for certain specific topics, including ‘Irish biblical commentaries’ (102), ‘Irish apocrypha and eschatologica’ (184), ‘Luxeuil, Bobbio and Columbanus’ (338), ‘Collectio canonum Hibernensis’ (615) and ‘Medieval vernacular narrative prose’ (1511). Some items are introduced with brief, though often very valuable, notes. It is a pity that these are somewhat sporadic and do not accompany every item. According to the preface, the rationale for this is that some works ‘especially in Old and Middle Irish, . . . may be less familiar to readers’ (xvii). That, of course, depends on the reader. While it is true that every text listed in Section 27 ‘Medieval vernacular narrative prose’, has its own note (955–1127), and one goal of the work is clearly to make this material more accessible to the non-specialist, a more even dispersal of these notes would have been of great benefit, as would some more consistency in the notes’ contents. For while some of those on vernacular narratives date the texts, others do not. One might question certain decisions regarding categorizations and organization. It is a little peculiar, for example, that Lebor Bretnach (1251), the Middle Irish translation of Historia Brittonum, appears in Section 28 ‘Historicist and historical vernacular texts. Verse, prose and prosimetrum’, while the roughly contemporary translation...

Conceiving a nation. Scotland to ad 900 by Gilbert M�rkus (review)

Reviews 103 volume is a great pleasure to read. I have a single desire for improvement: the otherwise legible, elegant font is inconsistent in rendering lower-case italic ‘a’, which in some places appears proportionately together with its partners (see p. 86), yet elsewhere manifests an unusually low, squat counter (as at p. 138). This is perhaps a niggling criticism. However, one’s eye meets with that letter-form repeatedly. References Boll, Sheila. 2002. Foster-kin in conflict. Fosterage as a character motivation in medieval Irish literature. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Cambridge. Ní Bhaoill, Róise. 2010. Ulster Gaelic voices. Bailiúchán Wilhelm Doegen 1931. Béal Feirste: Ultach. Ó Corráin, Donnchadh. 1979. Onomata. Ériu 30: 165–180. ———. 2017. Clavis litterarum Hibernensium. Medieval Irish books & texts (c. 400—c. 1600). Turnhout: Brepols. Ó hInnse, Séamus. 1943. Fosterage in early and mediaeval Ireland. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University College Dublin. O’Rahilly, Thomas F. (ed.). 1926. Dánta grádha. An anthology of Irish love poetry (a.d. 1350–1750)2 . Cork: Cork University Press. ———. 1946. Early Irish history and mythology. Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. Parkes, Peter. 2006. Celtic fosterage. Adoptive kinship and clientage in northwest Europe. Comparative studies in society and history 48: 359–395. Smit, Johannes Wilhelmus. 1971. Studies in the language and style of Columba the Younger (Columbanus). Amsterdam : Hakkert. Tolstoy, Nikolai. 2009. The oldest British prose literature. The compilation of the four branches of the Mabinogi. Lewiston , NY: Edwin Mellen Press. Walker, G. S. M. (ed. & trans.). 1957. Sancti Columbani opera. Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. Gilbert Márkus, Conceiving a nation. Scotland to ad 900. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017. ISBN 978–0–7486–7898–3. xiv + 295 pages. £70 (hardback) / £19.99 (paperback /e-book). Patrick Wadden Belmont Abbey College The early medieval history of northern Britain, with its legacy of Roman borders, the presence of several different peoples (Picts, Gaels, Britons, Anglo-Saxons, and Scandinavians ), and shortage of surviving textual sources, presents unique questions and obstacles for the modern scholar. In this engaging book, Gilbert Márkus deals with these in a conPatrick Wadden [patrickwadden@​ bac​ .edu] is Associate Professor of History at Belmont Abbey College, North Carolina. His interests focus on the political and cultural links that existed between the different part of the Gaelic world and on the place of the Gaels in the broader Insular and European worlds of the Middle Ages. 104 North American journal of Celtic Studies fident and compelling way. The result is a work that manages to be both informative and sophisticated and that will be of interest to students and more advanced scholars alike. As the first volume of the New History of Scotland, this book replaces Alfred Smyth’s Warlords and holy men of 1984. Recent decades have witnessed innovative changes in our approaches to medieval sources that emphasize the dangers and difficulties of reading texts written in later periods as sources for earlier events. Simultaneously, revolutions in our understanding of such crucial concepts as frontiers and ethnicity have fundamentally altered our view of early societies. Informed by these recent historiographical trends (vii–ix), Márkus provides a thorough overview of the period, while also attempting to reframe certain debates. After a brief preface, the book consists of six chapters. The first, sub-titled ‘Trade, culture and empire in the early centuries’, deals with the earliest recorded history of what is now Scotland through to the end of the Roman period. The author demonstrates an impressive breadth of knowledge in setting events in northern Britain not only in the context of events farther south on the island, but also in relation to developments elsewhere, particularly other frontier zones. He also uses archaeological and epigraphical evidence well to augment the scant historical records of the period. Gone is the image of the ‘Celtic fringe’ of Europe and, in its stead, we are presented with the image of northern Britain as already in contact with the rest of Europe before the arrival of the Romans. The next chapter, on the development of sub-Roman kingdoms, deals with the emergence of the polities familiar to students of early medieval northern Britain, including Dál...

Voices in Prefaces: Speaking Irish in an English Reformation

Voices in Prefaces: Speaking Irish in an English Reformation John McCafferty ‘I humbly take my leave. From my house in St Patrick’s Close Dublin, the 20th of October 1609’: these words close the preface to a book printed in the Irish language in Dublin: Leabhar na nurnaightheadh gcomhchoidchiond agus mheinisdraldachda na Sacrameinteadh … do réir eagalse na Sagsan. Coming sixty years after the first Prayer Book in English, this translation is one of eight works printed in Irish between 1571 and 1690. Five have prefaces, yet only one of those is wholly in Irish – the 1571 Aibidil Gaoidheilge & Caiticiosma. Only one has prefaces in both languages – the 1601 New Testament. The remaining three introduce Irish books solely in the English tongue. Why? Because they were speaking to the authority sponsoring reformation in Ireland. That authority, whether in Dublin Castle or Westminster, was monoglot. A monolingual monarchy meant a great deal for the future of Protestantism in Ireland. The Dublin parliament of 1536–37 passed a flurry of legislation borrowed from the English break with Rome two years earlier. Yet tucked in after the SupremacyAct came 28 Henry VIII c. 15: An Act for the English Order, Habit and Language. This law yoked Henry’s break with Rome together with the politics of language in Ireland, thus wrapping medieval roots around modern regalism. Much of the provision of this statute was centuries old, familiar from the Statutes of Kilkenny of 1366 – targeting Irish hairstyles, clothing and customs. Yet there was a new twist, a twist with big consequences, unthinkable in thefourteenth century, because here was now a king supreme under God, a king who had broken with the Pope. This supreme governor insisted that all newly-ordained clergy take an oath to learn English, teach it in their parishes, preach and make bidding prayers in it. Over a decade before the first Prayer Book in English in England (1549), this legislation made a seamless garment of Anglicisation and schism. As Henry’s schism segued into Protestant reformation under his son Edward VI and his daughter Elizabeth I, the reforming belief that use of 484 Studies • volume 106 • number 424 John McCafferty the vernacular was essential grated against Dublin Castle’s promotion of English. Tudor and then Stuart policy towards Irish was unstable in intention. There was sporadic interest, usually shown in proclamations, spurts of enthusiasm and local initiatives. Even Elizabeth I herself (despite her 1567 provision of £66 13s 4d for an Irish typeface) was door-stepped in 1575 by Laurence Humphrey, Master of Magdalen College, Oxford who, producing an alleged Irish translation of the New Testament by Archbishop Fitzralph of Armagh, urged the queen to get on with the job. Yet, it was not until 1634 that the Church of Ireland itself got around to legislating for Irish. Loss of enthusiasm for evangelisation through the vernacular in colonial settings, a kind of colonial fatigue, was not a particularly Protestant phenomenon. In New Spain and in New France, Catholic missionaries jettisoned Nahua and Huron respectively, as they became convinced of the innate barbarity of the vernaculars. In sixteenth century Ireland, an old discourse about English civility and superiority joined a new colonial sensibility. All of this makes the prefaces above mentioned those of what might be described as overlooked voices. The writers, Irish-born Gaelic-speaking Protestants, were people under pressure. They were at serious variance with the overwhelming majority of their fellow speakers. They adhered to an established church in a state whose reflexive strategy was to remake Ireland as a copy of England. These are, quite literally, prefaces to a history that didn’t happen. They are worth a listen. Aibidil Gaoidheilge & Caiticiosma (Dublin, 1571)1 Seán Ó Cearnaigh was born in Leyney, Co. Sligo, about 1545. He attended Cambridge, taking a BA degree in 1565. By 1570, he was Treasurer of St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin. This first book printed in Irish in Ireland came just as Elizabeth was trying to retrieve her early investment in the enterprise. In his short Irish preface to this fifty-five page primer, Ó Cearnaigh insists on the redemptive effect of the Irish typeface, which will ‘open to you that road that...

The Earliest Irish and English Books: Time for a Reappraisal?

The Schaffhausen codex of Adomnan of Iona’s Vita Sancti Columbae, and the manuscript now known as St Cuthbert’s Gospel, are two of the most iconic manuscripts in the Insular tradition of book-produ...

James Joyce and the United Irishman , Paris 1902-3

James Joyce and the United Irishman, Paris 1902-3 Frank Callanan (bio) —O, don't ask me such questions, Madden. You can use these phrases of the platform but I can't. —But surely you have some political opinions, man! —I am going to have to think them out. I am an artist, don't you see? (SH 56) —Is that by Griffith? says John Wyse. —No, says the Citizen. It's not signed Shanganagh. It's only initialled: P.1 (U 12.1538-9) The National Library in Dublin holds a school exercise book for mathematics manufactured by the Papeterie-Imprimerie F. Bénard and purchased from its outlet at 10 Galerie de l'Odéon. It is inscribed at the head of its once pink front cover: Priez de rendre à James Joyce Rue Corneille Paris This is what was formerly referred to as Joyce's Paris notebook, at a time when there were believed to be separate Paris and Pola notebooks, and is now designated as Joyce's Paris-Pola commonplace book, or early commonplace book, 1903-1912 (NLI MS. 36,639/02/A).2 The notebook contains at pages 16-17 a dense untitled list in Joyce's hand of Irish books, and a further shorter list at page 30. The immediate occasion for this article is the identification of the source of Joyce's two lists that are taken from the 7 March and 4 April 1903 [End Page 51] numbers of the United Irishman, the Dublin weekly newspaper edited by Arthur Griffith and published 1899-1906. Joyce, who had graduated from University College in September 1902, was in Paris from 3 to 22 December of that year. After an extended Christmas in Dublin, he was back in Paris, at the Hotel Corneille on the Rue Corneille, flanking the Théâtre de l'Odeon and just off the Jardin du Luxembourg, from 17 January to 10 April 1903.3 His eventual return to Dublin was sudden and unexpected, brought about by the illness of his mother. May Joyce died on 13 August 1903. On 8 October 1904, Joyce left Dublin with Nora Barnacle to begin what transpired to be a life-long exile from Ireland. The United Irishman published a list of Irish books in two parts, the first on 7 March 1903 entitled 'A Rural Library', the second almost a month later on 4 April 1903 entitled 'An Irish Rural Library, II'. The list was a revised version of one published by the United Irishman three years previously, that Griffith in 1903 stated to have been compiled by William Rooney, his friend and collaborator who had died in the interim. The first of the 1903 lists consisted of books in English, and the second comprised books in Irish. An intended third list being 'a short supplementary list of books in English or Irish or general subjects suitable for an Irish rural library' never appeared. The identification of a source for the lists in the Paris notebook resolves an issue in Joyce scholarship. It moreover provides unequivocal direct evidence that Joyce was reading the mid-period United Irishman, and that he was not drawn to the paper solely on account of its political content. Stanislaus Joyce in his memoir of his brother wrote that Joycean had declared that 'the United Irishman was the only paper in Dublin worth reading, and in fact, he used to read it every week'.4 Joycean scholarship has in general been slow to explore the implications, in part because Stanislaus's recollection relates to Joyce's qualified support for the programme of Sinn Fein (established in 1907), and the first reference in Joyce's correspondence to the United Irishman is in a letter to Stanislaus from Trieste in March 1905.5 More generally, the import of his interest in this newspaper has been overlooked as the consequence of a lack of curiosity as to Joyce's intellectual relation to Irish nationalism in 1902-4 that was premised on the assumption that he was then indifferent to Irish politics, and allegiance to a narrative that was always suspect in which his feelings towards Ireland underwent a sentimental and political transformation in the...

"Who Needs Irish?" Reflections on the Importance of the Irish Language Today (review)

Reviewed by: “Who Needs Irish?” Reflections on the Importance of the Irish Language Today Brian Ó Conchubhair “Who Needs Irish?” Reflections on the Importance of the Irish Language Today, ed. Ciarán Mac Murchaidh ( Dublin: Veritas Publications, 2004), 192 pp. $21.95. Distributed by Irish Books and Media, Minneapolis, MN. The Irish language, it seems, provides endless disputes, ranging from the language's official status in the European Union, the construction of apartment complexes for English-speakers, the banning of Anglicized place-names in The Gaeltacht, the private schools doling out exemptions to opt out of Irish examinations, to the declining numbers studying higher-level Irish. If the language if not widely spoken, it is nonetheless widely debated. The arrival of 'Who Needs Irish?' Reflections on the Importance of the Irish Language Today, edited by Ciarán Mac Murchaidh, a lecturer at St. Patrick's College, Dublin, is both timely and welcome. Mac Murchaidh's introduction contends that two debates currently exist about the Irish language: a sporadic debate in English and a persistent debate in Irish. Who Needs Irish? focuses on the contemporary importance of Irish. The basic premise underpinning Who Needs Irish? is the "intrinsic worth in preserving the Irish language for ourselves, for our children and for all generations still to come—and that is the greatest challenge of all." Thirteen essayists explore what it means to be an Irish speaker, both in the Republic and in Northern Ireland; several, notably Alan Titley and Breandán Ó Doibhlin, explain why there is a need for Irish. Titley candidly and uncompromisingly argues that language is central to identity. For Titley, "if 'Irish' identity is to mean anything at all, it must mean something in the first place." Titley's key essay is one that every aspiring Irish Studies student would do well to read and genuinely consider, before regurgitating the clichés of Ascroft et al. in the topic sentence of their opening paragraphs. The length style, and tone of the articles varies widely: some are brief and clear-cut, while others, such as Ó Doibhlinn, are somber and complex. Donncha Ó hÉallaithe provides an excellent, if brief, overview of efforts to revive Irish in the twentieth century. Recalling his youth as a native-speaker in Donegal, Lillis Ó Laoire suggests that for Ireland to exist as a postcolonial entity "we need to learn how to do it better; to improve teaching; to realize that teaching alone is not enough to build bilingual communities; to shed our myopic monolithic [End Page 156] attachment to 'English only' together with our fear and suspicion of the Irish other." One of the more successful articles is Pádraig Ó Mianáin's critique of what it means to be "an ordinary man with ordinary interest" in Northern Ireland, where Irish is often perceived as "the language of the bomb and bullet." Lorcán Mac Gabhann contributes a useful discussion of the bias against Gaelscoileanna (all-Irish "charter" schools) exhibited by the Teachers' Union and the Catholic Primary School Management Association, which see the dramatic growth in such schools as a threat to the status quo. Anna Heusaff describes the interaction of recent refugees into Ireland and the language, and, in doing so breathes a welcome note of inclusiveness into a book where the pronoun "we" is used extensively, but often without much consideration. The literary contributions are the strongest in the volume. Scholars will revel in frank and enlightening articles by Éilís Ní Dhuibhne and Gabriel Rosenstock. Ní Dhuibhne's "Why Would Anyone Write in Irish" represents a major scoop for the editor; this essay alone makes the collection worth purchasing. Rosenstock's essay, "How I Discovered Irish or How Irish Discovered Me" offers those unfamiliar with his work an insight into the most prolific poet in modern Irish, a man of wide and catholic literary taste. Máirín Nic Eoin reviews Cathal Ó Searcaigh's poetry to examine hybridity in Irish language culture. Her reading of "Idir Dhá Theanga" serves as a wonderful introduction for anyone unfamiliar with her literary scholarship in Irish. Given the polarized and stereotyped nature of debate surrounding the Irish language, Who Needs Irish? makes the case for Irish. The...

'The best banned in the land': Censorship and Irish Writing since 1950

The cloud of state censorship that had cast a shadow over the Irish literary landscape since 1930 eventually began to lift in the late 1960s. The appeals mechanism introduced in 1946 had undone some of the worst excesses of the early years of censorship (to largely symbolic effect, as most of the titles were out of print), but the first signs of liberalization did not appear until the late 1950s, when control of the Censorship Board was wrested from the Catholic Action cabal that had run it since the beginning. The improvement was limited and Irish writers continued to regard the censorship of their work as an occupational hazard; indeed, as the list of banned writers contained the majority of the greatest contemporary writers in the English language, inclusion on the register was seen by some as an inverted badge of honour. The controversies generated by the banning of works by John McGahern and Edna O'Brien in the 1960s helped fuel the movement for reform, and in 1967 the censorship legislation was overhauled. This resulted in the gradual unbanning of the Irish books on the list over the next twelve years, and also marked the end of the censorship of Irish writers, with the sole exception of Lee Dunne, who carried the flag into the 1970s. (1) The passage of the Censorship of Publications Act, 1929 had been the result of a sustained campaign by Catholic Action groups after independence, part of a general process of 'Catholicization' that became the primary element in the forging of a separate Irish identity. (2) The demands for censorship focused on the need to control the availability of imported birth control literature, together with popular British periodicals and newspapers with salacious content. The problem of 'sex novels' and 'drainpipe fiction' was alluded to, but not foregrounded in the push for a state censorship system that would replace the inherited British controls, based on the courts, which were deemed inadequate. (3) Because of the hostility to modern literature (as part of a general hostility to modernism) that permeated the ideology and discourse of the groups and individuals at the forefront of the censorship movement, many in the literary community feared that books rather than periodicals, and serious literature rather than pornography, would become the focus of control; their fears were well-founded. Under the terms of the act, a censorship board of five, appointed every three years by the minister for justice, recommended to the minister the permanent prohibition of any book or periodical if it was deemed to be in its 'general tendency indecent or obscene', or if it advocated contraception or abortion. Indecent was defined as 'suggestive of, or inciting to sexual immorality or unnatural vice or likely in any other similar way to corrupt or deprave', while obscene was not defined. The composition of the successive boards, from the first in 1930 until 1957, remained consistent: a member of the Catholic Truth Society of Ireland (CTSI) and/or the Knights of St Columbanus as chairman, together with three other Catholics (usually CTSI and/or Knights of Columbanus members), and a token Protestant, represented by a Trinity College Dublin academic. As a four-to-one majority was sufficient to ban a book, the Trinity representative was, in the words of banned writer Francis Hackett, a 'decoy ... a hostage Protestant. His could be the Diary of a Superfluous Man'. (4) According to the secretary of the Board, this in-built majority was an unstated but understood arrangement with successive ministers for justice. (5) The requirement to take the general tendency and overall merit of a book into account was ignored from the outset as the censors waged war on modern literature, backed up by the customs authorities and organized groups who scoured books for objectionable passages, marked them, and sent them on to the board. Most of the leading writers of modern fiction from Britain, America, and continental Europe (English translations only)--Proust, Nabokov, Boll, Huxley, Zola, Mann, Greene, Malraux, Steinbeck, Faulkner, Hemingway, H. …

RILM (Repertoire International de Litterature Musicale)

Overview: Repertoire International de Litterature Musicale (RILM) is a comprehensive bibliography of writings about music serving the global music research community. Today RILM has over 650,000 records in 214 languages from 151 countries. All document types are covered in RILM, including e-publications, journal articles, books, dissertations, conference proceedings and Festschriften at the article level, reviews, critical editions, and more. In the year ending 30 June 2011, 39,796 publications as well as 5330 reviews were added to the database. Compared with last year, the national committees submitted almost the same number of citations and a higher number of abstracts. Some aspects of the database have changed, including the classification system and some document type designations. RILM continues to be available by subscription on EBSCOHost and ProQuest, and improvements to the online versions of RILM are aimed at allowing easier and more robust searching capabilities for researchers. Subscriptions are stable and usage has increased considerably. Most importantly, RILM continues to consider how it can best serve the academic music community, and, as always, suggestions and input are very welcome. Committees: This year RILM's national committees contributed citations for 18,695 new bibliographic main records and 1201 reviews, and added 13,699 abstracts. (Last year we received 18,301 new records, 1310 reviews, and 12,592 abstracts). RILM colleagues in China submitted more than 4000 records this year, in Germany more than 3000, in the U.S. more than 2400, and in Russia and Poland more than 1200 each. The Dutch committee submitted over 500 records. Committees submitting between 100 and 500 records include Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Croatia, the Czech Republic, France, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, and the U.K. Those national committees from smaller countries that steadfastly contribute abstracts of their important publications to RILM are every bit as valuable, and RILM acknowledges and thanks all of them. We are delighted to announce the establishment of a new committee in Cyprus, headed by Annini Tsiouti. Without our committees, one of the strongest aspects of the database--its international coverage--would be far weaker. For a list of all national committees and members, see www.rilm.org/globalNetwork/index.html. As always, the RILM International Center in New York does its best to add publications not contributed by the national committees or by authors. This year 22,261 main records and 4448 reviews originated at the International Center. However, because the Center has limited or no access to publications in many countries, the only way to ensure their representation in RILM is with local help. To this end, RILM would like to establish new committees in countries that do not actively participate at present, and to add contributors to committees that are not able to keep up with their country's publications. If you would like to become involved in the RILM project or know of colleagues who might be interested in doing so--or if you just want to find out more about what this involves--please contact Barbara Dobbs Mackenzie (bmackenzie@rilm.org) or Zdravko Blazekovkc (zblazekovic@rilm.org). Irish National Committee: In honor of IAML's host this year, and in recognition of the successful revival of its RILM committee, RILM would like to draw attention to the work of the Irish National Committee. Chaired by Kerry Houston at the Dublin Institute of Technology, the members are Adele Commins, Catherine Ferris, Helen Lyons, Maria McHale, Denise Neary, and Bryan Quigley. The previous Irish committee had been quiet for a few years, resulting in a backlog of entries. One of the most important developments during the year was the clearing of this backlog with the assistance of a grant from the Music Libraries Trust (UK), which enabled the committee to pay a researcher to work on records for Irish books and theses that had not been updated in the RILM database. …

Public libraries in Ireland I. Archbishop Narcissus Marsh and the foundation of the first public library

Founded 300 years ago, Marsh’s Library in Dublin – Ireland’s first public library – is described by its librarian as a ‘treasury of the European mind’. The outstanding collections, in their purpose-built 18th-century accommodation, are still accessible to the public. They include Irish books and manuscripts and books on subjects such as travel, botany, music and natural history. Recently the catalogue of printed books has been computerized and made available on the Internet.

Reflecting A New Confidence: Irish Historical Fiction for Children

Reflecting A New Confidence: Irish Historical Fiction for Children Celia Keenan (bio) The first striking feature of Irish historical fiction for children is its sheer volume. In my reckoning, approximately one quarter of all Irish books for children consists of those of predominantly historical interest. We can only speculate as to why this should be the case. Fiction for children is not, however, isolated from other forms of cultural activity and there is in the wider culture of Ireland a very high interest in history. Arguments about history can be heard, for example, on popular chat shows on radio and television. The names of certain historians are as well known as those of contemporary poets, dramatists, and novelists. Much contemporary literature for adults reflects this strong historical interest. It is, perhaps, natural that publishers should wish to take advantage of this interest by publishing books of historical interest for children. The historical novel has a particular importance in colonial and post-colonial cultures, when people need to explain who they are or why their plight is painful. But the present enormous growth in historical fiction for children in Ireland would seem to me to reflect a new confidence in Irish society, emanating from the widespread popular belief that if we understand the past we might behave better in the future. The question as to why an individual writer might choose to write historical fiction for children has been answered in a great variety of ways by different writers. History can offer ready-made stories and, to some extent, characters. History can offer a wealth of material detail. History can enable writers to deal with delicate or controversial subjects in a safer context than the utterly contemporary would. Some writers feel the need to tell stories that they feel have been forgotten or ignored; their passion and excitement in discovering, for example, that the history of women’s lives is being told for the first time is something they want to share with children. [End Page 369] If history is to work as fiction in writing for children it seems to me that there are some basic rules to be borne in mind. The first of these is that the writer must work very hard to learn about the past and to get the details right. In the words of Katherine Paterson: The world of the book must be as accurate as the writer can make it, not only because the writer owes this much to history, but also because she owes this much to fiction. (227) Paterson would also emphasize that being true to the past means being true to a time when moral and social sensibilities were different from today’s and that to sanitize the past is to do an injustice to it and to condescend to the present. It can be a challenge to deal with religion, class, gender, or race, in a historical context, in a way that does not avoid the less pleasant aspects of the past. In Paterson’s words, poor historical fiction will simply dress up modern characters in pseudo-ancient dress and so make the characters tamer and more like ourselves than historical people. (227) The second rule would seem to me to be that, having done a lot of research, the writer must be prepared to abandon most of it, to pare the details down to the necessary minimum for the success of the plot. The third rule, I think, is that the writer must feel passionately that there is something about the past that he or she wants to share with children. There has been evidence of a definite struggle on the part of writers to find forms that will enable them to tell the stories of Ireland’s past effectively to children. Previously, Irish writers of historical fiction for adults confronted these problems (and solved them) by choosing a hero who experiences the burdens of history but not as one of its main actors, not as one of its great figures. This figure becomes an observer and someone with whom the reader can identify. Frequently, he (in the earlier periods of Irish historical fiction the hero was generally a...

Artful Books: Illustration in Irish Children's Books

Artful Books: Illustration in Irish Children’s Books Pat Donlon (bio) Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts—the book of their deeds, the book of their words and the book of their art. No one of these books can be understood unless we read the two others. (John Ruskin) “In the beginning was the word.” For many Irish people it is difficult to accept that the opening of the Gospel of St. John was not written with Ireland specifically in mind. Much has been said about Ireland’s history and literature and now, as we face a new millennium, Irish writers have a confidence and a maturity born from a clear understanding of their place in the scheme of things, of their place in the great tradition of Irish writing. Irish poets, dramatists, novelists, and children’s writers continue to produce work which, though national in the narrow sense, belongs properly to the larger global community. But in discussions on Irish education and culture great emphasis continues to be placed on the role of the writer, with much less focus on the visual. To paraphrase Ruskin, we have yet to complete the manuscript of art and the art of the book. Part of that manuscript must be the evolution of illustration in children’s books and the role of illustrators in the developing and nurturing of a distinctive Irish identity. In the relatively short history of Irish children’s literature there have been two major motivating factors in the production of Irish books for Irish children. The first was the movement known as the Celtic Revival and the second was the period known in Ireland as “The Emergency.” The Celtic Revival was part of a larger cultural revival which was characterized by efforts to foster an Irish cultural identity through the [End Page 402] collection of folklore, the revival of the Irish language, and the attainment of an Irish Ireland through the renewal of interest in all things Irish. The second period of increased publishing activity, “The Emergency,” saw Ireland, at the time of the Second World War, declare its neutrality—an action which effectively resulted in a period of cultural isolation. That this isolation and introspection was not all negative, however, can be seen in the comments in 1950 of one critic: that our very isolation created here a feeling of individuality and self-confidence; or alternatively and perhaps simultaneously the very precariousness of our chosen isolation demonstrated even more strongly than involvement that we were part of modern Europe and not, as some would pretend, an exotic and miraculous survival from a Celtic Middle Ages. (Sheehy 45) During both of these periods there was an unprecedented level of publication for young people in both Irish and English. In 1893 Douglas Hyde, who was later to become Ireland’s first President, lamented that there were only six Irish-language books in print; in the same year Conradh na Gaeilge, the Gaelic League, was founded. Its main aims were the revival and preservation of the Irish language and traditional Irish culture. Over the succeeding decades the Irish government sought to promote publication in Irish and, most significantly in this regard, An Gúm, the publications branch of the Department of Education, was set up: it is today still foremost in this particular field. Between 1926 and 1964 it is estimated that An Gúm produced some 1,465 publications. Many of these were children’s books, some home-grown such as Máirín Ní Chriagáin’s Seán-Eoin (Old John), with illustrations by Jack B. Yeats, others hybrid, such as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in translation, with illustrations by Kathleen Verschoyle. In the 1970s An Gúm was again to play a critical role in the realm of children’s books and more specifically in the production of high quality picture and illustrated books. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Illustration by Lucas Rooney for Na Rudaí Beaga (Little Things), Daibhis (1919). The Celtic Revival period in the production of books in English is best exemplified by works such as Crofton Croker’s Fairy Legends of the South of Ireland, with...

The workhouses of Ireland: the fate of Ireland's poorJohn O'Connor. Dublin: Anvil Books & Minneapolis: Irish Books & Media, 1995. 303 pp.

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History of Irish Forestry. By Eoin Neeson. Dublin, Ireland: The Lilliput Press, 1991. x + 388 pp. Notes, bibliography, index. $29.95. Available in the U.S. through Irish Books and Media, Minneapolis, Minnesota

<i>History of Irish Forestry.</i> By Eoin Neeson. Dublin, Ireland: The Lilliput Press, 1991. x + 388 pp. Notes, bibliography, index. $29.95. Available in the U.S. through Irish Books and Media, Minneapolis, Minnesota

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