Dublin University Magazine, The



1833-77; first iss. Jan. 1833; founded by TCD Tories, Charles Stuart Stanfordm first ed., with Mortimer and Samuel O’Sullivan [Sullivan], et al., all disgruntled after by Reform Bill; initially published by Curry, to 1846, then by James McGlashen, who managed its publication from the start; Lever ed. in 1842, reaching circulation of 4,000. Le Fanu ed. and proprietor 1861-69; never liberated itself from its Fraserian format, declined to illustrate itself, and dropped off because of disinterest in its Irishness after 1840. Pioneer serialisation of long fiction. Published Mortimer Collins and Rhonda Broughton as well as Irish authors such as William Carleton. Dublin University Magazine, vols 1833-1858 [+vol. 52.] Known as the ‘Maggy’ by Mangan and others on The Comet; DUM called ‘the supreme archive of Irish Victorian experience’ by W. J. McCormack (Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, 1991, Vol. 1, p.1176); see chronology of editors, infra.

[Full-series table of contents pending.]


Barbara Hayley, ‘A Reading and Thinking Nation: Periodicals as the Voice of Nineteenth-century Ireland’, in Hayley and Enda McKay, ed., Three Hundred Years of Irish Periodical (Assoc. of Irish Learned Journal: Gigginstown, Mullingar 1987), pp.29-48; pp.29, espec. pp.35-36; Wayne E. Hall, Dialogues in the Margin: A Study of the Dublin University Magazine (Washington: CUA 1999), viii, 252pp.

Michael Sadleir, Dublin University Magazine, Bibliographical Society of Ireland Publ, Vol. IV] (1933-38), No. 4 [listed in Colm O Lochlainn, Anglo-Irish Song-writers, 1950, endpage ads.]; Patrick O’Neill, ‘German Literature and the DUM, 1833-1850: A Checklist and Commentary’, in Long Room [Trinity College Library] , Nos. 14-15 (TCD 1977), pp.20-31.


Barbara Hayley, ‘Irish Periodicals’, in Anglo-Irish Studies, ii, (1976) [pp.83-108], p.94-97. [H]olding place with best English and Scottish periodicals from 1833 to 1877; founders include Otway, Butt, John Anster, Samuel O’Sullivan, Sam. Ferguson, William Archer Butler, and John Francis Waller, who Hayley collectively characterises as young dons and undergraduates in protest against pro-Catholic liberalism of University authorities; over the years by publishing Irish work .. it established that an Irish literary world did exist. they firm state, ‘We are conservatives; and no feeble vacillation shall dishonour our steady and upright strength. We cannot assent to the suspicious friendship that would counsel an impotent moderation, where vigor and intrepid activity would prompt to rough collision. (DUM, vol. 9 No. 31, Mar 1837, p.365. Isaac Butt enlisted George Brittaine, Mrs Hall, Sheridan Le Fanu, Clarence Mangan, and introduced serials by Carleton and Charles Lever, who was editor (after wills) from 1842 to 1845. Lever’s approach was breezy and flamboyant, broadening the appeal and raising circulation to 4,000 copies with his own fiction (Jack Hinton, Arthur O’Leary, Tales of the Trains), and G.P.R. James’s ‘Arrah Neil’; Mortimer O’Sullivan’s The Nevilles of Garretstwon, and many other long-running novels. From 1845 to 1861 there were a succession of editors, and the magazine was less aggressive, less national, reviving its attack on Irish literary and political subjects under Le Fanu, who sold after ten years to John F. Waller for £1,500, who edited it for seven years, allowing it to decline before sale to Kennington Cooke in 1877, the final year of publication. (Hayley, bibl.: Michael Sadleir, ‘Dublin University Magazine’, Bibliographical Society of Ireland, vol. 5, No. 4 (1938).

[ top ]

Reference
Brian McKenna, Irish Literature. 1800-1875 (1974), p. 30 for list of editors. Also, Irish Book Lover 10, p. 75. See Michael Sadlier, DUM (Bibliog. Soc. Ir., 5., 1933-8, p. 58ff.), of which Brian McKenna says, see Michael Sadleir’s brilliant DUM, Its History, Contents and Bibliography, Bibl. Soc. of Irel. Publ. 5 (1938), pp.57-82.

1848 and all that: Kappa, ‘France: a Retrospect of the Year 1848’, writes:‘From its centre to its extremities, Europe has been convulsed’. in DUM, Vol. 3., No. 193, Jan 1849, p.134 (quoted in Chris Morash, The Hungry Voice, Gill & Macmillan 1989, p.16).

Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, gen. ed. Seamus Deane (Derry 1991), Vol. 1: role of reconciler of modern and antiquarian impulses [ed., 1013]; [Ferguson’s review of Hardiman, 1055]; founded 1833, its emergence associated with articulate and talented movement among Irish intellectual protestants [ed. 1173]; founders exclusively protestant [1174]; monthly between 1833-1877, the supreme archive of Irish Victorian experience, especially Protestant southern middle class; founders included John Anster, Isaac Butt, John Francis Waller; editors included Butt, Charles Lever, and Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu; regarded the Renaissance of Catholic energies with hostility; emphasis on literature as stimulant to national pride; links with conservative politics and appearance of lofty elevation [1176-77]; [Ferguson was one of The Dublin Magazine’s [sic, err.] most prolific and influential contributors; prints ‘Head and Heart’ 1833 without further bibl. 1177]; Ferguson’s Hibernian Nights’ Entertainment, began anonymous publication in DUM, Dec 1833 [1185] DUM not particularly attentive to Ulster perspectives [1185]; Butt’s ‘Past and Present State of Literature in Ireland’, DUM 1837 [1200-1212]; [published by William CurryJnr & Co., 1201n]; Mangan’s ‘The Twenty-fourth of February’, after the German of Zacharias Werner, appeared in DUM 1837 [1212-13]; Le Fanu, not a founder, commenced contribution with Purcell papers in Jan 1838 [1231]; Lever’s early novels serialised in DUM, e.g., Jack Hinton,1842 [1243]; no simple contrast with The Nation can be encouraged [ed., 1255]; [James M’Glashan, D’Olier St., had become publisher in 1846, 1265]; Mangan’s Anthologia Hibernica commenced in DUM, Feb. 1847 [1266] [also 1269: an article on the Boyne Valley by William Wilde, in DUM Vol 29, March 1847 (no index, err.)]; Ferguson’s four-part review of Hardiman’s Irish Minstrelsy appeared in DUM between April and Nov 1834; his ‘Lament for Thomas Davis’ appeared in DUM, Feb. 1847, two years after its composition [1297]; Butt, joint-ed. DUM, 1834-38 [1297]; [biog: Mangan, contrib. to DUM, 1298]; Lever’s Harry Lorrequer (1837) serialised in DUM [1299].

Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, gen. ed. Seamus Deane (Derry 1991), Vol. 2, index: [2, with others]; [1833-77; Mangancontributor, 6], [Ferguson’s policy, to ‘live back in the countrythey live in’, 7]; [selects Mangan poems from DUM, 24-25]; [trans.poem from Hardiman reproduced by Ferguson’s review of do. in, 30];[err. 34]; [‘Lament for Davis’, 1847, in, 50]; [Aubrey de Vere,‘Irish colonization’, poem in, 1849, 56]; [Carleton contributorto, 205]; [err., 206].

Patrick Rafroidi, Irish Literature in English: The Romantic Period, 1789-1850, Vol 1 (1980). Moore’s statement of religious convictions was lambasted: ‘Of all the impudent productions that have every been intruded on the patience of the public [non] has exceeded ‘The Travels of an Irish Gentleman in Search of Religion’ .. It is a finished specimen of the most finished and most abominable superstition on Earth - Popery’ (7 July 1833). Nevertheless, in ‘Portrait Gallery, no. XXIX, Th. Moore’ (April 1842, DUM XIX, 112, pp.476-9), the magazine was convinced that ‘with all his faults, we are proud, and we feel his country should be proud, of Moore.’ [18]; Further, DUM, from 1833, fiercely hostile to French Jacobinism. [17] .. even more virulent [on] Irish affairs, especially regarding the Established Church. ALSO, DUM of April 1844 devotes 11 pages to analysis of Coleridge’s writings (XXIII, 136, pp.458-69); 33 pages in 1835 (VI, 31, Aug. 1835, pp.1-16; VI, 33, Sept. 1835, pp.250-67); prints a thitherto unpublished poem of Coleridge, ‘A Stranger Minstrel’ (XXVI, 151, July 1845, pp.112-13). ALSO, DF MacCarthy trans. Vigny, in DUM XXXII, 192 (Dec. 1848), in ‘sounds and Echoes’, pp.648-58. [46, n.]. Also, In DUM, ‘The Irish Church Question’, V, May 1835, pp.493-520, disestablishment was ‘an atrocious attempt to fling the Protestant in Ireland to the papists.’ At O’Connell’s arrest, the paper exulted: ‘The law had triumphed. The career of the Agitator has been arrested. The ‘monster meetings’ are at an end.’ (XXIII, 135, Mar 1844, pp.389 seq.) Likewise, at Mitchel’s (XXXI, 186, June 1848, p.785. ALSO, remarks on Duffy’s ‘National Library of Ireland’: ‘The object of the publications before us is to represent the rebellion of ‘98 as a justifiable resistence to British oppression; the men who figured in it, and who were exiled or executed, as heroes, patriots and martyrs; the law processes, by which they were brought to justice, as hellish contrivances for the destruction of innocent men; the juries by whom they were convicted as perjured traitors; the judges by whom they were sentenced, as ruthless instruments of oppression, upon whose head rested the guilt of innocent blood; and the whole machinery of adminstration as contrived for the torture, pillage, proscription, and massacre of an unoffending population! such are the lessions which the masses are now expecged to learn from ‘The national Library of ireland’! It is a species of reading which may be called ‘treason made easy’‘ (DUM, XXXIX, 169, Jan. 1847, pp.81-2.) [Rafroidi, 1980, vol 1, p.146].

[ top ]

Notes
Chronology of Editors: Butt, 1834-38; ?;Lever 1842-45; ?; LeFanu 1861-1869 [Hayley says ten years = 1871]; JF Waller ?1869-77 [Hayley says seven years = 1870]; Kennington Cooke, 1877.

Publishers: DUM published by William CurryJnr & Co. [FDA1 1201n]; but note also, James McGlashan maintainedan interest in it since joining Curry, 1830-36 (becoming a partner atthe latter date), and took over publication at Curry’s death in 1846(see John Sutherland, Victorian Fiction, OUP, under“McGlashan”]. See also Charles Lever, infra: His Harry Lorrequer and Jack Hinton were proposed and encouraged by McGlashan.

[ top ]