Abstract
This chapter examines the trade of translations in nineteenth-century Ireland and, in particular, the influential agency and patronage of publishers in driving the circulation of translations. Using the case study of the Dublin publisher, James Duffy, the chapter looks at the importance of translations in his trade and how his publications both moulded and responded to emerging Irish reading trends. The expansion of the reading public, technological advances and changes in copyright laws all contributed to unfolding possibilities in the world of letters in Ireland. This chapter examines the commercial success of certain types of translation and the dramatic rise of James Duffy on the back of a strong translation trade.
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Notes
- 1.
The original texts were James MacGeoghegan, Histoire de l’Irlande ancienne et moderne (1758); Charles Gobinet, Instruction de la jeunesse en la piété chrétienne (1665). Boney’s Oraculum was a compendium of occult knowledge (supposedly owned by Napoleon) which had nebulous origins and was allegedly a translation into English from a German transcription and translation of ancient Egyptian texts.
- 2.
A few years later, however, due to the devastating effects of the famine, his business almost folded. Only for the intervention of a friend, who provided capital to Duffy, the publisher like many others at the close of the 1840s might have ceased production.
- 3.
Liguori’s full name in Italian was Alfonso de’ Liguori but in the English-speaking world, he was generally referred to as Liguori rather than de’ Liguori. I will refer to the Italian as Liguori in this and in subsequent chapters but when referencing his original published works, I will use de’ Liguori.
- 4.
- 5.
Note: 1d = one penny; 1s = one shilling.
- 6.
Bibliophile says that the average novel published in three volumes cost a guinea and a half at the time when Duffy started publishing (Bibliophile 1945).
- 7.
Duffy was not the only Irish bookseller to sell books cheaply. Others, like Dixon Hardy had ‘Cheap Series’ which in the middle decades of the century cost 1s 6d per volume. He also offered books ranging in price from 1d to 6d.
- 8.
For an outline of some of the issues relating to translation and copyright laws, see Bassnett and France (2006).
- 9.
Duffy’s catalogues were advertised at various points in The Nation newspaper; see, for example, lists published on 2 September 1843, 4 October 1845 and 24 February 1855. The original text was Pierre Collet La vie de Saint Vincent de Paul, instituteur de la Congrégation de la Mission et des Filles de la Charité (1748).
- 10.
Originals contained in Giovanni Pietro Pinamonti, Raccolta di varie operette spirituali (1698) and Opere del padre Gio. Pietro Pinamonti della Compagnia di Gesù (1706).
- 11.
Storia delle eresie (1768).
- 12.
In advertising his new edition of the Douay Bible, Duffy boasted that ‘in point of beauty and accuracy, [the Bible] will not suffer by a comparison with any Edition of the size that has ever appeared in any language or in any Country’. He further stated that ‘no expense has been spared to render the Work in some measure worthy of the kind patronage and liberal support which the Publisher has already received from the Catholic Hierarchy, Clergy, and Laity, both at home and abroad’ (The Nation, 5 December 1846).
- 13.
Le Glorie di Maria (1750).
- 14.
For more, see Begadon (2011a).
- 15.
Originally quoted in Milan (2013, 114).
- 16.
See, for example, the Field Day Anthology (Deane 1991, 1175).
- 17.
Cullen to James Duffy, Vol. 3, 3 November 1859 (MacSuibhne 1961, 271).
- 18.
Within Duffy’s translations, the use of religious images imported from Europe is noteworthy and can be seen, for example, in the prints from Marckl and Budzilowicz which accompany Russell’s translations of von Schmid’s Tales (von Schmid 1846) and in the stock image of Liguori used in all of Duffy’s translations from the Italian saint. Through networks of exchange in Europe, there was a standardisation of visual objects which facilitated tendencies towards orthodoxy and ultramontanism. For more, see Godson (2015, 28–30).
- 19.
Cullen to Mary Cullen, 21 December 1850 (MacSuibhne 1961, 2.62).
- 20.
Cullen to James Duffy, 8 December 1857. Original letter in Latin (MacSuibhne 1961, 2.239).
- 21.
Cullen to James Duffy, 3 November 1859 (MacSuibhne 1961, 3.269).
- 22.
By Ultramontane and Gallican, I am referring to Vatican-influenced and French-influenced strands in Irish Catholicism which will be further elaborated in the next chapter.
- 23.
The momentum behind the translation of the works of Liguori was not entirely determined by the wishes of the hierarchy. Market demand was also a factor as Matthew Russell describes: ‘The extraordinary interest with which [Callan’s] translations of the devotional works of St. Alphonsus Liguori, till then entirely unknown among our people were welcomed by Catholics of every class, encouraged [Callan] to pursue with still greater energy what was to him truly a labour of love; and the degree of his application’ (Russell 1891, 301).
- 24.
For more details, see Duffy’s 1851 catalogue.
- 25.
Some of Callan’s translations from Liguori include: Preparation for Death 1844; Instructions on the Commandments and Sacraments 1842; Glories of the Blessed Virgin Mary, a paraphrase on the Salve Regina Part I 1843; Glories of Mary 1846; Clock of the Passion 1850; Stations of the Most Holy Way of the Cross 1846; The Love of Our Lord Jesus Christ 1842; Moral Dissertations on Purgatory, Antichrist, the Last Judgement, the General Resurrection 1847; Treatise on Prayer 1844; Reflections and Affections on the Passion of Jesus Christ 1846; Sermons for all the Sundays in the year 1846; True Spouse of Christ 1845; Selva, a collection of Meditations for Ecclesiastics 1847; Visits to the Blessed Sacrament 1845.
- 26.
The work is signed by ‘A Catholic Priest’; Callan always signed his translations ‘A Catholic Clergyman’ and given his declining health in the 1850s, it is likely that this is a different translator of Liguori.
- 27.
‘Most of these productions, too, locked up as they are in a foreign tongue, are inaccessible to the greater number of those who, in our country, embrace this state of [religious] life. Nor has much been done until recently to place these works within the reach of the many by the medium of translation.’ Quoted by Milan from The Path of Perfection in Religious Life: A Work Intended for Persons Consecrated to God by l’Abbé Leguay translated by an Irish religieuse published by Duffy 1862 (Milan 2013, 112).
- 28.
For an idea of prices of translations in this period, when writing in 1840 to the editor of The Nation newspaper, Charles Gavan Duffy, James Clarence Mangan mentioned some of the payments that could be expected for his work: ‘36 of the pages I send you make a sheet of the University Mag., for which I get £8—the sixth would of course, be £1-6-8d.—but if you think the quantity in question worth £1 or 15s even, we shall agree right well’. Letters to Charles Gavan Duffy from people prominent in literary and political affairs, 1840–1846, 4 May 1840. National Library of Ireland, Ms. 5756. Wall reports that John O’Daly paid Mangan 10s each for the verse renderings of translations from the Irish used in his Poets and poetry of Munster (Wall 1964d, 97).
- 29.
Cullen to James Moran, Vol. 4, 29 May 1863 (MacSuibhne 1961, 146).
- 30.
A book of translations by Mangan entitled ‘Echoes of Foreign Song’ was planned as part of the ‘Library of Ireland’ series published by Duffy and it was even advertised on the first page of The Nation in 1846. The volume was never published by Duffy and Mangan wrote ‘I fear that J [ames] D [uffy] is off with me as to the “Echoes”, at least I don’t see any announcement of the volume in his advertisement’ (Chuto 2011, 436).
- 31.
The original Italian text was Apparecchio alla morte (1758). It was quite common for Duffy to publish positive reviews of his own publications in periodicals that he ran. In a practice known to contemporaries as ‘puffing’, publishers in the nineteenth century regularly publicised their works in friendly newspapers; for the use of this approach by the English publisher Henry Colburn, see (Sutherland 1986).
- 32.
Discorsi sacri morali o sia Sermoni compendiati per tutte le domeniche dell’anno (1793).
- 33.
Louis Bourdaloue, Retraite spirituelle à l’usage des communautés religieuses (1753); Jean de Bernières Louvigny, Le chrestien intérieur, ou la conformité intérieure que doivent avoir les chrestiens avec Jesus-Christ (1661).
- 34.
Reporting on his funeral on 8 July 1871, the Freeman’s Journal observed that he was an ‘eminent Irish Catholic publisher’ and ‘as good and kindhearted a man as ever breathed’. The paper named some of the notable attendees at the large funeral including the Lord Mayor of Dublin, over 20 priests, a variety of authors and other Dublin publishers, and underlined that Duffy would be remembered for his ‘manly energy, public spirit and enterprise, and for earnest piety, patriotism and kindness to the poor’.
- 35.
The Nation obituary published on 8 July 1871 spoke of Duffy as the ‘most extensive publisher this country has ever produced’ who did ‘more for the literature of this country, sacred and profane, than all the other publishers who have preceded him […] He was the first Irish publisher to issue works of a high class and of great value at prices that brought them within the reach of the people.’
- 36.
From the second half of the nineteenth century, the publisher relied less and less on translations, but nonetheless, they continued to be a presence in his publications and periodicals. For example, The Illustrated Dublin Journal (1862) contained work by Banim, Carleton and Griffin and many illustrations of Irish localities. Interspersed with these, however, were translations from Goethe, Béranger and other European authors. The decline in textual importations is mirrored in Irish society by a decrease in the importation of foreign religious items (Lawless 2010, 90).
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O’Connor, A. (2017). The Translation Trade: Economies of Culture in the Nineteenth Century. In: Translation and Language in Nineteenth-Century Ireland. Palgrave Studies in Translating and Interpreting. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59852-3_3
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