Newspapers and Nationalism: The Irish Provincial Press, 1850-1892 (review)

Newspapers and Nationalism: The Irish Provincial Press, 1850-1892, by Marie-Louise Legg, pp.238. Dublin: Four Courts, 1999. $45. Distributed by ISBS, Portland, OR.

This book offers a timely and valuable investigation into the rise of nationalism in the nineteenth-century Irish press. As well, it readily situates itself within the current critical interest in both Victorian Ireland and the proliferation of print culture it experienced. Marie-Louise Legg carefully considers the various material, legal, and political causes that subtended the rise in nineteenth-century Irish print culture. Such developments as the dropping of taxes on advertisements, the waiving of the tax on stamped paper, and the development of a rail system that could deliver newspapers to rural areas all took place against the changing cultural and social landscape of Victorian Ireland. Legg focuses on the influence that political nationalism had on the provincial press and how, in turn, the press was able to change the tenor of Irish nationalism. As Legg states early in the volume, "in Ireland the rise in the cheap press after 1860 coincided with the rise of nationalism, and over time the number of papers that expressed nationalist ideas began to increase." These papers sometimes responded to popular opinion, but also took a lead role in shaping it at various points in the 1800s.

The most obvious strength of the volume is its meticulous recording of the material facts of Irish newspaper publication in the mid- to late-nineteenth century. Legg offers a useful accounting of the number of papers extant in particular regions at specific times, as well as a reading of the economic precariousness of the newspaper business during the nineteenth century. Legg divides her material into three periods, 1850-1865, 1866-1879, 1880-1892, which, while making the material manageable, seem arbitrary. The volume ends with a useful appendix that lists a number of the most important papers published in Ireland in the 1800s; the appendix does not rival the Newsplan document compiled by James O'Toole and recently revised by Sara Smyth of the National Library of Ireland, but it is a good resource for those interested in the provincial press. It is no small accomplishment to bring this diverse factual and statistical information into a single source, and scholars doing research in this area owe a great debt to Legg's painstaking recording of this material. Finally, Legg's study of the history of Irish reading room culture and circulating libraries in chapter four deserves to be singled out for special attention. Legg clearly finds her niche here; the entire volume is strong, but this material alone could have been developed into a book-length study of considerable merit.

While the volume deserves high praise, there are a few shortcomings that need to be pointed out. The book suffers from lapses in copyediting, and there are numerous typographical errors and inconsistencies in citation. These may seem excusable or inevitable, but when the topic under consideration is print culture such errors become arguably more noticeable. A more serious shortcoming of the volume, resides in Legg's consistent turning away from theoretical questions. The primary material seems to get away from her at times when, instead of offering a thoroughreading of the larger political or cultural terrain of the nineteenth century, she seems to settle for telling interesting anecdotes about Irish publishers, editors, or politicians. There are opportunities available for the historian of this material that Legg simply does not take up. For example, in The Break-up of Great Britain Tom Nairn has argued "the arrival of nationalism in a distinctively modern sense was tied to the political baptism of the lower classes. Their entry into history furnished one essential precondition of the transformation of nationality into a central and formative factor. And this is why, although sometimes hostile to democracy, nationalist movements have been invariably populist in outlook and sought to induct lower classes into political life." Legg...