This dictionary attempts in nearly 2,200 entries to cover all workers in the various branches of the Dublin book trade until the Act of Union in 1800. All grades of workers from apprentice to master, and papermakers, engravers, hawkers and other peripheral traders are considered, as well as the all-important printers and booksellers. Entries naturally vary from one or two lines to one or two pages in length. The aim is to illustrate the working life of each subject by reference to contemporary sources such as records of the stationer's Guild, state papers, imprints, newspaper advertisements, customers' accounts, etc, with documentation for each statement made. Entries will thus give practical clues to dating undated books, as well as provide a basis for further research into individual traders' work and the Dublin trade as a whole. Some account of the history and organization of the Dublin Guild of St Luke (cutlers, painter-stainers, and stationers) appears as introduction.

The story of how books in all their variety, from mathematics textbooks to murder mysteries, reach the hands of readers is a significant one. This is especially so in Ireland, where Irish publishing houses battle to flourish and survive through economic crises and in a market dominated by British publishers.The paradox of publishing, writes Tony Farmar, is that though it is a business, and a risky business everywhere, it is much more than that. Publishers’ ‘gatekeeping, encouragement and investing’ help to shape what has been called a country’s ‘mentalities’. Thus the importance of a flourishing local publishing industry, especially those that share a language with an ‘over-mighty neighbour’.The product of many years of research, this book focuses on the years from 1890 and includes a detailed chronicle of the key dates and events in the development of Irish book publishing. The final chapter, by Conor Kostick, covers the period from 2008 to 2018.What emerges is a vivid portrait of how the Irish book publishing industry contributed and continues to contribute in immeasurable ways to the intellectual and cultural life of Ireland.

This collection of essays illustrates various pressures and concerns—both practical and theoretical—related to the study of print culture. Procedural difficulties range from doubts about the reliability of digitized resources to concerns with the limiting parameters of 'national' book history.

This is a study of international print networks developed across the English-speaking world over a significant part of the long nineteenth century. The first study of its kind, it draws on unique sources from Australasia, North America, South Africa, the British Isles, and Ireland, to explore how printers interacted and shared trade and cultural identities across international boundaries during the period 1830-1914. Morality, mobility, mobilisation, and solidarity were central to how compositors and print trade workers defined themselves during this period. These themes are addressed in case studies on roving printers, striking printers, and creative printers. The case studies explore the cultural values and trade skills transmitted and embedded by such actors, the global networks that enabled print workers to travel across continents in search of work and experience, the trade actions reliant on mobilization and information-sharing across the printing world, and the creative ideas that printers shared through such means as memoirs, poetry, prose, and trade news contributions to print trade journals and other public outlets.

Technology in Irish Literature and Culture shows how such significant technologies—typewriters, gramophones, print, radio, television, computers—have influenced Irish literary practices and cultural production, while also examining how technology has been embraced as a theme in Irish writing. Once a largely rural and agrarian society, contemporary Ireland has embraced the communicative, performative and consumptive habits of a culture utterly reliant on the digital. This text plumbs the origins of the present moment, examining the longer history of literature's interactions with the technological and exploring how the transformative capacity of modern technology has been mediated throughout a diverse national canon. Comprising essays from some of the major figures of Irish literary and cultural studies, this volume offers a wide-ranging, comprehensive account of how Irish literature and culture have interacted with technology.