That Woman! Studies in Irish Bibliography: A Festschrift for Mary 'Paul' Pollard (review)

It is given to few people to transform understanding of the history of their country. In her work on the eighteenth-century Irish book trade Paul Pollard was such a one. And she did more. In the Long Room at Trinity College Dublin, and then in the new rare books department that she founded and formed, she breathed life into a library rich in books but poor in money. From her home in Marsh's Library, surrounded by her collection of pre-1914 children's books, she influenced the world nearby, and ensured that visitors to Dublin were properly welcomed. As a partner in one of the best of Ireland's antiquarian bookshops, her influence was felt more widely still. Those who crossed the path of this generous but formidably determined person did not always find their way easy. The words of the title of this book are quoted from the reaction of a Dublin Bencher to her very public and effective criticism of the Benchers' selling their books in the 1970s. Nor did she always stand on ceremony. When she was being introduced to give her Lyell lectures at Oxford, she sat on the stage twiddling her thumbs. Was it nervousness, or was it some signal to the audience?

She died on 24 June 2005. This collection of essays thus stands in memory of her as well as in celebration. At the core of her scholarly work was a wish to link books to the people who had made and sold them. It was this that inspired the book that arose from those Lyell lectures, Dublin's Trade in Books, 1550–1800, and it was this that drove her great project, published by the Bibliographical Society in 2000, A Dictionary of Members of the Dublin Book Trade, 1550–1800. It is thoroughly appropriate that many of the essays here deal with people and their books — not just with the books. The volume opens with an account of John Franckton, printer and bookseller in Dublin. R. J. Hunter, who is currently working on book-trade relations between Ireland and Britain, bases much of his essay on records of government payments to him in 1600–19 as the official printer at Dublin. Most of this was for proclamations (quite a number cannot be identified today in even one copy); but in 1608–09 he also printed William Danyell's translation into Gaelic of the Book of Common Prayer. Danyell was one of the group of Cambridge graduates who joined the new Trinity College, and the government paid him £26 13s. 4d. for the translation, before paying Franckton £40 for its printing — not a huge sum when compared with the £13 6s. 8d. paid a few years later for five hundred proclamations.

Among the strengths of contributors to this volume is their inclination to base their work on archives: the lessons of the dedicatee have been learned. Jean-Paul Pittion's account of the Protestant book trade at Saumur in the seventeenth century is partly founded, tantalizingly, on an inventory of a bookseller named Daniel Delerpinière. A footnote makes a suitable disclaimer, to the effect that this is not the occasion for an analysis of Saumur booksellers' inventories, and that those for the Desbordes are still in process of transcription. We can but wish such a project all speed, as an essential accompaniment to the bibliographical record of Saumur imprints assembled by Louis Desgraves.

Hunter's and Pittion's are the only seventeenth-century topics in this volume. Most of the rest, apart from Pat Donlon on the children's book illustrator S. Rosamond Praeger, deal with the long eighteenth century. Nial Osborough's account of two lawsuits involving the King's Printer George Grierson II, in the second of which he found himself ranged...