The print cultures of the Celtic languages, 1700–1900

Abstract

While the cultural trajectories of the Celtic language communities have some broad similarities in the long term, their histories in the medium term were quite different. The article approaches this issue through a comparative analysis of the print cultures of Welsh, Scottish Gaelic, Breton and Irish in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The approach is both quantitative and qualitative, surveying total production in the four languages as well as looking at the presence and absence of different genres in the different languages. It also examines diaspora publishing in America and Australia. The different patterns are explained primarily in terms of the nature and extent of institutional church support for publishing in those languages.