Dublin Penny Journal

Biographical data: 1832-36; established by Caesar Otway, joined by George Petrie, and John O’Donovan, who contrib. on Irish proverbs; contained articles on Irish language, topography, music, antiquities, etc.; edited by Philip Dixon Hardy [MRIA] from 1833, and degenerated into ‘ragbag’ (Hayley, op. cit., infra, 1987); circulation reached 50,000 copies in four years.

Thoemmes Facs. Rep. Catalogue: The Dublin Penny Journal, 56 issues including important articles by Sir George Petrie the topographical artist, antiquarian and musicologist; Rev. Caesar Otway, antiquarian and travel-writer; James Clarence Mangan, the translator and poet; Anna-Maria Hall [Mrs S. C. Hall], the novelist and travel-writer; John O’Donovan, the archaeologist, place-name expert and antiquarian. Subjects include history, biography, poetry, antiquities, natural history, legends and traditions.

Samuel Ferguson, “Dublin Penny Journal” [article], in Dublin University Magazine for 1840 - the founding year of its successor Petrie’s Irish Penny Journal (Robert Welch, Irish Poetry, 1980, p.133f.) - writes: ‘In reviewing the whole progress and prospects of Irish literature, there is no event to which we would be disposed to attach so much importance, as an effectual revival of that taste for facts which prevailed in the times of Ware, Davi[e]s, and of U[s]sher. .. By the knowledge of the acts, opinions, and conditions of our ancestors .. we can extend the poor three score and ten years, which is our immediate portion in time, back and back as far as facts exist, for the support of speculation. It is this enlarging of our portion of space, of time, of feeling, that is the true source of all intellectual pleasure. ... What we have to do with, and that to which these observations properly point, is the recovery of the mislaid, but not lost, records of the acts, and opinions, and conditions of our ancestors-the disinterring and bringing back to the light of intellectual day, the already recorded facts, by the which the people of Ireland will be able to live back, in the land they live in, with as ample and as interesting a field of retrospective enjoyment as any of the nations around us.’

Bibl.: ‘The Dublin Penny Journal’, in DUM 15 (1840), 115-16. Welch, op. cit. p.134. See also Seamus Deane, gen. ed., Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day Co. 1991), Vol. 2, 6 [Mangan as contributor].

Barbara Hayley, ‘Irish Periodicals’, in Anglo-Irish Studies, ii, (1976) [pp.83-108], p.99ff: Dublin Penny Journal, 1832-1837; changed editorship from ubiquitious Otway and Petrie to the less high-minded Philip Dixon Hardy in its second year. Otway, joined by Petrie, John O’Donovan as proprietors, kept up a high standard of scholarship with contributors like Francis Ross, [Freeman] Wills, and Mangan; the first issue consisted of an ‘Historical Notice of the City of Dublin’ with elegant woodcut, ‘The Age of Brass’; ‘Agriculture in Ireland’, ‘A visit to the Gardens of the Zoological Society of Dublin’, long extract from Lover’s Legends and Stories of Ireland; and notice of Hardiman’s Irish Minstrelsy. When Hardy took over, it degenrated into a rag-bag of miscellaneous cuttings ... such as ‘Catching a Tartar’, ‘Churning in Chile’, ‘orthographical transmogrification’, and condensed tales by Carleton, “JLL”, Denis O’Donoghue, Martin Doyle, et al. Hardy brought the magazine to a conclusion after four years, pleasing ill-health.

Doomed: According to Hayley, the paper was doomed by a reference to the ‘bloody reign of Mary’ which infuriated the Catholic hierarchy, who founded the Catholic Penny Magazine [‘under the inspection of Catholic divines’, Feb. 1834-Dec 1835], taking away a readership of 6,000 straight away. Hayley continues: ‘Folds, the publisher, decided to get rid of it, and Hardy, the printer, publisher, proprietor and editor of so many Irish magazines, took over.’

Daithi O hOgain: The anthologies published by Croker were based on material gathered in Munster and, though quite accurate in description, were presented in a stage-Irish style. The same can be said of the folklore material in the works of Lover, Carleton, and Griffin, and the contributions of P. H. Hardy to the Dublin Penny Journal. [Message to RICORSO: BS].

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Criticism

Commem. issue: ‘Dublin University Magazine: Commemorative issue’, Long Room: Bulletin of the Friends of theLibrary, Trinity College, Dublin, Nos. 14-15 (Autumn 1976-Spring/Summer 1977). Incl. contribs. by S. Rasid, ‘Political Economy in the DublinUniversity Magazine, 1833-40’ (pp.16-19; ‘Patrick O’Neill, ‘German Literature and the Dublin University Magazine 1833-50: A Checklist and Commentary’ (pp.2031); W. J. McCormack, ‘Sheridan Le Fanu and the authorship of Anonymous fiction in the Dublin University Magazine’ (pp.32-36); W. Le Fanu, ‘Notebooks of Sheridan Le Fanu’ (pp.37-40)

Chronology: Dublin University magazine, Vols I-90, Jan. 1833-Dec 1877; continued as University Magazine: A Literary and Philosophic Review, vols I-5 Jan 1878-June 1882. 2 further quarterly nos. publ. Sept and Dec 1882. Prop. Digby Pilot Starkey and Cheyne Brady (Jan.- Oct. 1856); Cheyne Brady (Nov. 1856-June 1861); J. S. Le Fanu (July 1861-June 1870); Charles F. Adams (July 1870-May 1873); Durham Dunlop (1873-(?).

Editors: Charles S. Stanford (Jan 1833-July 1834); Isaac Butt (Aug 1834-41) (?); James McGlashan (?), James Willis [(1841-March 1842); Charles Lever (April 1842-Jan. 1846); James Francis Waller (?) (Feb. 1846-Jan 1854 (?); Durham Dunlop (?), Percy Boyd (?), James McGlashan (?), Digby Pilot Starkey (?) and Cheyne Brady (?) Jan-Oct 1856; Cheyne Brady (?) Nov 1856-June 1861, J. S. Le Fanu, July 186I-June 1870; James Francis Waller (?) July 1870-May 1873; Durham Dunlop, (?) June 1873-?); Keningdale Cook (?-1877.

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