'Modernity and Nineteenth-Century Ireland: the making of a "national reader"'

Abstract

This paper examines ‘national reading’ in nineteenth-century Ireland in relation to concepts of Irish modernity. Through William St Clair’s framework of the ‘reading nation’, I assess historical descriptions of reading against the grain of Irish cultural nationalism to query the discrepancy between perceptions of a reading culture and the facts of reading practice. With attention to the context of the Irish Revival, I suggest that Ireland’s exposure to a European modernity through print culture was much broader than nationalist portraits of an ‘Irish reader’ permit.