The Irish Book in English, 1550-1800 (review)

As the preface to this volume records, this is the first to appear of five projected volumes of the Oxford History of the Irish Book, which should eventually take the reader from the 'earliest manuscript compilations to the flourishing book industries of the late twentieth century' (p. [vii]). Brian Walker and Robert Welch, the general editors, note the recent development of book history as a discipline in Great Britain, and align their project alongside the Cambridge History of the Book in Britain and Edinburgh University Press's History of the Book in Scotland, insisting theirs to be the first comprehensive survey of its kind in relation to Ireland. Raymond Gillespie and Andrew Hadfield, meanwhile, rightly acknowledge the pioneering work of twentieth-century scholars, including E. McClintock Dix and Mary (Paul) Pollard. While asserting the ambition of their History, Walker and Welch also indicate the difficulties facing the editors of the several volumes. 'Until recently', they write, 'there has been very little sustained attention given to the Irish book as an object situated in an environment of complex contingencies. This world of the book is concerned not only with individual endeavour and with changing intellectual and cultural formations in society, but also with power, money, trade, and communications' (p. [vii]).

The present volume consists of an introduction and twenty-one chapters, broken down into five sections: 'Print Culture', 'The Structure of Print', 'Collecting and Reading Print', 'The Impact of Print', and 'Sources for Print'. Gillespie and Hadfield are fortunate in having been able to draw on the expertise of a formidable team of contributors. So, for example, Toby Barnard contributes two chapters, 'Print Culture, 1700–1800' and 'Libraries and Collectors, 1700–1800', Colm Lennon offers an account of the print trade from 1550 to 1800, Máire Kennedy writes on 'Reading Print, 1700–1800' and 'Foreign Language Books, 1700–1800', James Kelly examines political publishing in the period, and Andrew Carpenter contributes on 'Literature in Print, 1550–1800', and Christopher Morash on 'Theatre and Print, 1550–1800'. Besides their introduction, the editors offer four chapters between them: 'Print Culture, 1550–1700', 'Reading Print, 1550–1700', and 'Sources for the History of the Early Modern Book in Ireland' by Raymond Gillespie, and 'Historical Writing, 1550–1660' by Andrew Hadfield. As the dates given in these sample chapters reveal, periodization is used flexibly throughout the volume, between the starting point offered by the first book printed in Ireland — Humphrey Powell's Book of Common Prayer (1551) — and the passing of the Act of Union. There is useful flexibility also within the general editors' attempt to address the intractable difficulties of how to deal with Gaelic and Hiberno-Latin materials alongside English-language print culture.

Individual chapters are of a high general standard and are often outstandingly good. While it is perhaps invidious to single out contributions in a volume whose strength lies in collective endeavour, I particularly enjoyed Thomas O'Connor's 'Religious Change, 1550–1800', written with considerable verve, and Christopher Morash's imaginative and illuminating 'Theatre and Print, 1550–1800'. Some contributors, especially those concerned with the late-sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, exercise exemplary caution when working with materials they recognize as 'scanty' or fragmentary, with the result that their chapters are at once dense with information and resistant to the temptation to proffer over-confident conclusions. Such caution extends to the arguments of the volume as a whole, with the general editors noting that 'Irish book culture [...] is one of great antiquity in the vernacular cultures of Europe [...] yet [...] the printed book came late to Ireland' (p. ix). Elsewhere, Raymond Gillespie argues that 'Print was an important force in shaping the world of early modern Ireland but it was not an irresistible one' (p. 32), a view seconded by Kelly's revealing distinction between the importance of print culture under James II and William III.

If the results roundly...