To celebrate St. Patrick's Day I wanted to take a look at the history of book publishing in Irish to celebrate the language and tie into the other theme of this blog, reading and literature.
I'm not proud to admit this but aside from the novels and stories I read in school, I have not read very many books in Irish. One exception to that is my lovely copy of Harry Potter agus an Órchlach (Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Hopefully taking a look back at publishing in Ireland will inspire me, and hopefully some of you, to pick up a book as Gaeilge.
Way, way back as far as Medieval times, literature in Ireland was hugely prevalent. So much so in fact that Irish literature forms the largest body of medieval texts, not only in any Celtic language, but also in any vernacular language. There are hundreds of medieval Irish stories available from the period before the year 1000, in comparison to the few tales available in the French and German languages. One reason for this, is the high regard to which poets were held in Irish Medieval society. It could take as long as 20 years to fully train an Irish poet, because most of their skill was passed down from one generation to the next.
However, in terms of actual book publishing, initially in Ireland books were supplied by English booksellers who – mostly unsuccessfully – supplied lists to the Irish reading public. But bookshops in Ireland only began to appear towards the mid-17th century, the majority of which were in Dublin. In smaller towns books tended to occupy only a few shelves in shops which sold a variety of other items such as groceries and hardware.
As the 19th century began, the bookselling activity of previous decades came to a halt. This was due to the extension of the British copyright act which meant Irish publishers could no longer produce reprints cheaply. This however led to Irish publishers taking matters into their own hands, and Irish book publishing began in earnest. One player which we can still see remnants of today is the Hodges firm from the 1840's who became the official booksellers to Trinity College Dublin and the Queen’s colleges of Cork and Galway. During the late 19th century, great progress was made with the new National Library building opening in 1890, in 1892 the National Literary Society was founded by WB Yeats, and in 1896 the first meeting of the Dublin Booksellers’ Association was held in Eason’s.
Another catalyst which gave rise to the popularisation of Irish book publishing was censorship in the in 1920's all the way through to the 1950's. Following the creation of the Irish Free State in 1922 a Committee on Evil Literature was appointed in 1926. The Censorship of Publications Act was put in place which banned books that were considered to be indecent or obscene, newspapers whose content relied too much on crime, and works that promoted the "unnatural" prevention of conception or that advocated abortion. This book censorship was carried out in several instances in Ireland between 1929 and 1998, with all remaining bans from that period having expired by 2010 and only one book being banned in Ireland since then in 2016.
Irish book publishing and especially the distribution of books in the Irish language has had a long and storied history and I hope the above tale paints a clearer image of how we arrived at our current state of literature in Ireland. As well as books being continued to be published in Irish, it is wonderful to see popular stories being translated as well as Irish authors who write in english receiving literary acclaim such as Sally Rooney and Naoise Dolan in recent years!
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