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1 results

  • 17 - The Irish trade

  • from I - LONDON AND THE ‘COUNTRY’
  • Edited by Michael F. Suarez, SJ, University of Virginia, Michael L. Turner, Bodleian Library, Oxford
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain
    Published online:
    28 September 2010
    Print publication:
    29 October 2009, pp 366-382

  • Summary

    The late start of printing in Ireland, in 1551, is an indication of the relative isolation and backwardness of its economy. Printing was introduced to the country as an instrument of government policy to promote its secular aim of securing power and religious objective of promoting the reformed religion. The potential growth of the book trade was hampered by the highly exclusive nature of the powers granted in the patents of the successive King's Printers. A real sign of the development of the trade came with the establishment of the Guild of St Luke in Dublin in 1670. An anguished notice by the journeymen printers in Dublin in 1825, intended to deter potential apprentices, stated that the art of printing in Ireland had been rapidly decaying under the withering influence of English monopoly. The 1830s and 1840s were to see the stirrings of independent Irish publishing feeding a growing appetite for nationalist literature.