The History Of Irish Book Publishing

In this seminal work, publisher and author Tony Farmar places the development of Irish publishing in its social and economic context, exploring how the mechanics of the industry, alongside the changing structure of Irish bookselling, have underpinned developments in the trade.

The story of how books in all their variety, from mathematics textbooks to murder mysteries, reach the hands of readers is a significant one. This is especially so in Ireland, where Irish publishing houses battle to flourish and survive through economic crises and in a market dominated by British publishers.The paradox of publishing, writes Tony Farmar, is that though it is a business, and a risky business everywhere, it is much more than that. Publishers’ ‘gatekeeping, encouragement and investing’ help to shape what has been called a country’s ‘mentalities’. Thus the importance of a flourishing local publishing industry, especially those that share a language with an ‘over-mighty neighbour’.The product of many years of research, this book focuses on the years from 1890 and includes a detailed chronicle of the key dates and events in the development of Irish book publishing. The final chapter, by Conor Kostick, covers the period from 2008 to 2018.What emerges is a vivid portrait of how the Irish book publishing industry contributed and continues to contribute in immeasurable ways to the intellectual and cultural life of Ireland.

Volume IV: The Irish Book in English 1800-1891 details the story of the book in Ireland during the nineteenth century, when Ireland was integrated into the United Kingdom. The chapters in this volume explore book production and distribution and the differing of ways in which publishing existed in Dublin, Belfast, and the provinces.

Volume III of the Oxford History of the Irish Book outlines the impact of the rise of print in early modern Ireland in a series of groundbreaking essays, charting the development of a print culture in Ireland and the transformations it brought to conceptions of politics, religion, and literature. This is an authoritative volume with essays by key scholars that will be the standard guide for many years to come.

Part of a series providing an authoritative history of the book in Ireland, this volume comprehensively outlines the history of 20th-century Irish book culture. This book embraces all the written and printed traditions and heritages of Ireland and places them in the global context of a worldwide interest in book histories.

This book is splendid, a worthy successor to such beautifully-produced books on typography as - Verlietis Sixteenth-Century Printing Types of the Low Countries. No reviewer, in a review of this length, can do justice to it, or to the range of types it describes. In addition to 150 illustrations, it contains eight pages of bibliography and five pages of index. It will certainly become a standard work of reference for Irish typefacesí Printing Historical Society Bulletin