A conference,
jointly organised by the Centre for the History
of the Book and The Centre for the History of the Media
(University College Dublin), took place in Dublin on
December 12-13, 2008. The theme of the conference was
Print Culture after Union, and its aim was to explore
the impact of 1707 and 1800 on the book trades of Ireland
and Scotland .
The delegates
were welcomed by the conference host, Sandy Wilkinson,
after which Bill Bell (CHB) delivered an introductory
lecture on ‘Scotland in the Empire of Print', looking
at the ways in which nineteenth-century emigrants performed
their Scottishness through their reading and book acquisition
habits. Other papers on the first day included Sylvie
Kleinman and Johanna Archbold (Trinity College Dublin)
on 'Watty Cox and the Irish Magazine Prints, 1807-1815',
Clara Cullen (School of History, UCD) on 'The reading
public in Victorian Dublin', and Alastair Mann (Department
of History, University of Stirling) on ‘Scottish Copyright
Law and the Union of 1707'. The afternoon concluded
with a Keynote Lecture on ‘The Last Frontier: The Bibliography
of the Nineteenth Century', delivered by Charles Benson
(Keeper of Rare Books, Trinity College Library, Dublin),
which provided an incisive analysis of the way in which
the practices of library professionals have helped and
hindered the development of bibliography as a field
of study.
The conference
continued on the Saturday morning with a talk from Niall
O'Ciosain (NUI Galway) on ‘The print cultures of Irish
and Scottish Gaelic between 1700 and 1900', after which
Regina Ui Chollatáin ( School of Irish, UCD)
explored the theme of ‘Irish language journalism and
print culture in the Revival period'. The conference
concluded with a lively panel which included Alex Benchimol
(Department of English Literature, University of Glasgow)
and Mark Towsey (Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, University
of Liverpool), who delivered papers on ‘Print Culture
and the Public Sphere in post-Union Scotland: Autonomy
or Assimilation?' and ‘Vestiges of Ancient Independence:
consolidating 1707 in the Hearts and Minds of Scottish
Readers 1750-1820', respectively.
There was lively
discussion over the two days about the exact implications
of political union for the book trade and its consumers,
as well as the relationship between the public sphere
and the construction of cultural identities through
print. Generous funding for the event was provided by
University College Dublin.
A full conference
programme is available online.
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