Book review: Brought to book, by Dr Toby Barnard
This book covers the business of printing and the availability of books in Ireland during just over a century, beginning in 1680. It was a century of convulsion in Ireland (weren’t they all!), with the aftermath of the Popish Plot in 1678, the accession of King James II to the throne of England in 1685 and the resulting reversal of fortune for Catholics, then the re-reversal of their fortune a few years later with the war in Ireland, the Williamite settlement, the Age of Swift, the enactment of the Penal Laws, and the interest in the American War leading to the Volunteer movement and ultimately to the founding of the Society of United Irishmen.
Dr Toby Barnard, Professor Emeritus of Hereford College at Oxford, is an authority on the period in question and brings his comprehensive scholarship to bear to illustrate the diffusion of ideas in Ireland through the medium of books — but not the diffusion of any ideas. Toby writes: “Governments saw education as essential to good order, productivity — and from the 16th century — Anglicization and the spread of Protestantism... Protestant concern to arm the ignorant against Catholic wiles had long regarded print as an essential weapon.”
