Abstract
In 1871 the Bookseller printed an article praising The Irish Builder and its attention to the domestic book publishing industry, mentioning specifically Christopher Clinton Hoey’s series of articles on ‘Native Literature and the Publishing Trade’. The James Duffy referred to in the article had died that year but had been a strong presence in the Dublin publishing world since the 1830s. It was Duffy who was responsible for the invention of what critic Barbara Hayley has called, a “new kind of cosy family Catholicism”, providing a bewildering variety of periodicals to cater for it. Duffy’s productions were aimed almost exclusively at a domestic market in the 1850s–1860s, when overhead costs to publishers had begun to decline, rail transportation within Ireland made distribution easier, and the removal of the various taxes on knowledge, along with an increase in literacy rates, created a new market in the lower middle class. Duffy’s success was also partly dependent on the widening of the reading audience that accompanied Catholic Emancipation in 1829, along with the central regulation from 1831 of the national school system. Greater freedom for Catholics meant a flurry of activity in terms of church building, the formation of Catholic book societies, reading rooms and mechanics’ institutes, and the production and distribution of schoolbooks and religious texts to an energized population.
“The Bible Society in Dublin was very busy in distributing new Bibles in all directions, which the good Catholics at once carried to the pawnshops. These were purchased again by Mr. Duffy, who brought them over to Liverpool in huge sacks, and exchanged them for books more agreeable to the Irish taste.”
Henry Curwen, History of Booksellers old and new (London: Chatto and Windus, 1873): 455.
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Notes
- 1.
‘The Bookseller on Irish Literature’, The Irish Builder (15 September 1871), 242.
- 2.
See Barbara Hayley, ‘A reading and thinking nation: periodicals as the voice of Nineteenth-century Ireland’ in Barbara Hayley and Enda McKay, eds., Three Hundred Years of Irish Periodicals (Mullingar, 1987), 42, and Rolf Loeber and Magda Stouthamer-Loeber, ‘James Duffy and Catholic Nationalism’ in Oxford History of Irish Literature, vol. 4, 115–121.
- 3.
See Anonymous, ‘How James Duffy Rose to Fame’, Irish Book Lover , 18.6 (November, December 1930), 168. The British Library Catalogue lists the Catechism of the Council of Trent (trans. by J. Donovan) as issuing from James Duffy and Co., Ltd., in 1829. This is the first publication advertised by Duffy that I have been able to find.
- 4.
‘James Duffy’ in Robert Hogan, ed., Dictionary of Irish Literature (London: Aldwych Press, 1996).
- 5.
Anonymous, ‘Contributions to Irish Biography. No. 29—James Duffy the Publisher’, The Irish Monthly 23 (November 1895), 596.
- 6.
‘How James Duffy Rose to Fame’, 168.
- 7.
See Anne O’Connor, Translation and Language in Nineteenth-Century Ireland (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 40–69.
- 8.
Ibid., 168.
- 9.
The literature on Young Ireland is extensive. Among recent additions is James Quinn, Young Ireland and the Writing of Irish History (Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 2015).
- 10.
Thomas Davis, quoted in Richard Davis, The Young Ireland Movement (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1987), 25.
- 11.
Thomas Davis, ‘Irish Literature and Publication’, Nation (15 April 1843), 425.
- 12.
The Spirit of the Nation, by the Writers of the Nation Newspaper, 2nd ed. (Dublin: James Duffy: 1843), iii.
- 13.
Ibid., iv.
- 14.
‘Literacy’, in S.J. Connolly, Oxford Companion to Irish History (2002).
- 15.
Charles Gavan Duffy, quoted in The Irish Monthly 23 (November 1895), 597–598.
- 16.
Ibid., 598.
- 17.
Thomas MacNevin, letter to Charles Gavan Duffy, 17 August 1844, National Library of Ireland MS5756. I am indebted to Dr Francesca Benatti for bringing this letter to my attention.
- 18.
Nation (29 April 1843), 456. As an example of the power of the patronage extended by Young Ireland, compare the fate of a rival ‘national’ series, James M’Cormick’s ‘National Library of Ireland Series’. See Appendix. See also Elizabeth Tilley, ‘“The Green and the Gold”: Series Publishing in Nineteenth-Century Ireland’, in John Spiers, ed., The Culture of the Publisher’s Series, Volume Two: Nationalisms and the National Canon (Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan and University of London, 2011), 178–179.
- 19.
S.H. Bindon, Preface to The Historical Works of the Right Rev. Nicholas French, D.D. (Dublin: James Duffy and Co., Ltd., 1846), x.
- 20.
Ibid., x.
- 21.
See M.J. MacManus, ed., Thomas Davis and Young Ireland (Dublin: Stationery Office, 1945), 117.
- 22.
Critic 9.231 (15 November 1850), 549.
- 23.
‘Introduction’, Duffy’s Fireside: A Delightful Monthly Miscellany, 1.1850, 3.
- 24.
See W.L., ‘Anonymities Unveiled. IX. Contributors to “Duffy’s Fireside Magazine”’, The Irish Monthly 20.228 (June 1892), 319–326; 319–20.
- 25.
Reynolds himself went by a number of different pseudonyms: Brother James, Bro James, E.L.A. Berwick (see Irish Monthly article cited above).
- 26.
‘Introduction’, Duffy’s Fireside: A Delightful Monthly Miscellany 1.1850, 3.
- 27.
Duffy’s Fireside Magazine 2.14 (December 1851), 59.
- 28.
‘Irish Gents’, Duffy’s Fireside Magazine 2.22 (August 1852), 298.
- 29.
Ibid., 300.
- 30.
See ‘Essy May’ in Duffy’s Fireside Magazine 2.23 (September 1852), 330–333.
- 31.
‘Answers to Correspondents’, Nation Saturday, 29 April 1843. According to The Irish Monthly, Duffy quickly recognised the profit to be made in publishing in parts. One of his first ventures was to issue O’Kelly’s translation of M’Geoghegan’s History of Ireland in 1831.
- 32.
‘Note to Contributors’, Illustrated Dublin Journal (14 September 1861), 32.
- 33.
The Illustrated Dublin Journal (29 March 1862), 480. Jerrold was a journalist and playwright. He spent a good deal of time in Paris, which may account for the difficulties with the supply of copy.
- 34.
Illustrated Dublin Journal (5 April, 1862), 496.
- 35.
Duffy’s Hibernian Sixpenny Magazine, 4.19 (July 1863), 43.
- 36.
Duffy’s Hibernian Sixpenny Magazine 5.25 (January 1864), 79–80.
- 37.
That is, a book costing 1fr would be sold by Duffy’s for 10p (i.e.) cost price. Freeman’s Journal and Daily Commercial Advertiser (Monday December 28, 1863), 1.
- 38.
Irish Monthly 3.269 (November 1895), 600.
- 39.
M.R. is the Rev. Matthew Russell. Russell was a Jesuit, founder and editor of Catholic Ireland, begun in 1873 and later renamed Irish Monthly, which Russell edited until his death in 1912 (see Dictionary of Irish Biography). The twopenny volumes listed here were published c.1840.
- 40.
For complete bibliographical information on these titles, see Waterloo Directory of Irish Periodicals.
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Tilley, E. (2020). The Domestic Journal: The World of James Duffy, publisher (1830–1864). In: The Periodical Press in Nineteenth-Century Ireland. New Directions in Book History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30073-9_6
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