The Oxford History of the Irish Book, Volume II: The Printed Book in Irish, 1567-2010s

The Oxford History of the Irish Book is a major series that charts one of the most venerable book cultures in Europe, from the earliest manuscript compilations to the flourishing book industries of the late twentieth century. For the first time, it offers a history of the Irish book as a created object situated in a world of communications, trade, transport, power, and money, and examines the ways in which books have both reflected and influenced social, political, and intellectual formations in Ireland. It is an important project for the understanding of Ireland’s written and printed heritage, and is by its nature of profound cross-cultural significance, embracing as it does all the written and printed traditions and heritages of Ireland and placing them in the global context of a worldwide interest in book histories.

Volume II, with eighty-two chapters by seventy leading commentators on, and participants in, Irish book history, spans approximately 450 years of Irish-language book production, distribution, and reception. It begins with the 1567 publication of John Carswell’s Gaelic version of the Book of Common Order and follows the story of the printed book and journalism in Irish into the twenty-first century, the internet, ebooks, and other formats.

The volume covers religious publications from the sixteenth to eighteenth century, competing versions of Irish history, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century texts which reflected an ’antiquarian’ interest in Ireland and its culture, ongoing literary production in the nineteenth century, printers, publishers, literacy, books, and volumes produced by learned societies interested in Irish language and culture, Gaelic Revival publications, post-Independence literature and its publishers, journalism from the late eighteenth to twenty-first century, lexicography, nonfiction, educational publishing, folklore and place lore, translation, the contribution of scholars from outside Ireland, publishing in the Irish diaspora, typography, book design and illustration, the reception of Irish-language texts (from censorship to bestsellers), book collection, and, finally, sources for the study of Irish book history.

This major study of Irish-language book history provides a useful resource for readers interested in Irish history, book history, Irish Studies, the Irish language, Celtic Studies, Translation Studies, linguistics, post-colonialism, and the Irish diaspora.

Éamonn Ó Ciardha, Reader in Irish/English Literary & Historical Studies, Ulster University, Frank Sewell, Senior Lecturer in Irish Literature and Creative Writing, Ulster University, Alan Titley, Emeritus Professor of Modern Irish, University College Cork

Éamonn Ó Ciardha is a Reader in History and Irish at Ulster University and has taught History, English, and Irish at the University of Toronto, the Keough Institute for Irish Studies, University of Notre Dame, Trinity College Dublin, the University of the Saarland, the University of Vienna, Framingham State University MA, and Ulster University. His recent publications include The Plantation of Ulster: Ideology and Practice (with co-editor Micheál Ó Siochru, Manchester, 2012), The Politics of Identity in Post-conflict States (with co-editor Gabriela Vojvoda, Routledge, 2015), and Monaghan: History and Society (with co-editor Patrick Duffy, Dublin, 2017).

Frank Sewell is a writer, translator, and senior lecturer in Irish Literature and Creative Writing at Ulster University. Former Irish-language editor of H.U. / The Honest Ulsterman journal, he has written, edited, and co-edited numerous books and anthologies. In the late 2010s, he edited and translated the poems of Seán Ó RÍordáin (Yale, 2014) and also of Máirtín Ó Direáin (Wake Forest, 2020). His original poems and other translations have been widely anthologized, including in The New North: Contemporary Poetry from Northern Ireland, ed. by Chris Agee (Wake Forest, 2008, 2011), and published in journals from Poetry Ireland to Poetry (Chicago).

Alan Titley is a scholar, a columnist with The Irish Times, a novelist, a short-story and fable writer, a literary historian, a broadcaster, and a dramatist. He was head of the Irish Department in St Patrick’s College, Drumcondra from 1981 until appointed Professor of Modern Irish in University College Cork in 2006. He has been a Professor Emeritus since 2011 when he retired. He has won many awards. His play Tagann Godot (Clóchomhar, 1991) was performed in the Abbey Theatre / Peacock Theatre in 1990 and An Ghráin agus an Ghruaim was performed in the Samuel Beckett Theatre in 1999. His plays have also been broadcast by BBC and RTÉ radio. His novels include Lámh, Lámh Eile (Cló Iar-Chonnacht, 2018) and Gluaiseacht (An Gúm, 2009). His critical work An tÚrscéal Gaeilge (Clóchomhar, 1991) is a seminal study of the Irish-language novel.