Irish Books and Irish People

“Irish people are very odd about books. They are, and every Irish writer knows it to his cost, the least book buying of publics. We, who write of Ireland, labour like the peasant proprietor in his hayfield, under a wholesome cloudy sky, earning our ... Read more

“Irish people are very odd about books. They are, and every Irish writer knows it to his cost, the least book buying of publics. We, who write of Ireland, labour like the peasant proprietor in his hayfield, under a wholesome cloudy sky, earning our diet of potatoes and buttermilk, though unhappily often in places where buttermilk, at least, is no how to be come by; and we have always leisure since the day is long from dawn to sunset, for passing the time of day with our neighbours. Our occupation is effectually shielded from the glare and glamour of commercialism, and, no doubt, so much the better for our virtue. Mr. Yeats has done more than any man living, perhaps than any man living or dead, to raise the fame of Ireland in the craft of letters; but heaven help Mr. Yeats – heaven help any of us – if existence depended on the sale of books to the Irish public. Yet Ireland is a country of booklovers: the man who whom books are a passion and a treasure is perhaps commoner there than anywhere in the world. Let me recall some of the Irish book-lovers I have known.” -Stephen Gwynn “Gwynn knew what he was talking about – he had been in his time a director of Maunsel (the Irish trade publishing house founded in 1905) and a literary adviser to Macmillan. The reluctance to buy books was the subject of jokes – as, for instance, George Birmingham’s Connacht dispensary doctor Lucius O’Grady who confessed that he bought a few books every year ‘quite privately, for no one in the west would admit that he threw away his money wantonly.’” -The Oxford History of the Irish Book, Volume V, “The Irish Book in English 1891-2000” CONTENTS INTRODUCTION NOVELS OF IRISH LIFE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY A CENTURY OF IRISH HUMOUR LITERATURE AMONG THE ILLITERATES: I.—THE SHANACHY II.—THE LIFE OF A SONG IRISH EDUCATION AND IRISH CHARACTER THE IRISH GENTRY YESTERDAY IN IRELAND Less