Production and Distribution

Abstract

Research on the printing and production of popular literature in Ireland is hampered by a comparative shortage of primary sources. The most recent survey of the Dublin trade before 1800 remarks that ‘surviving primary documents connected with the book trade are particularly rare’ and the principal article on provincial printing begins by pointing out that ‘substantial primary sources for the history of Irish printing are regrettably few, and for provincial printing almost nonexistent’. These observations apply to the Irish book trade as a whole; the shortage is even more pronounced at the lower end of that trade.¹