Recovering children’s reading: “Queer Treasures” of the Children’s Collection in Cork Public Library, 1922–1939

dc.contributor.advisorO Gallchoir, Clionaen
dc.contributor.advisorFitzgerald, Johnen
dc.contributor.authorMooney, Mairéad
dc.date.accessioned2019-10-01T10:59:05Z
dc.date.available2023-05-22
dc.date.issued2019
dc.date.submitted2019
dc.description.abstractThis thesis is concerned with advancing our knowledge of Irish children’s reading in the first two decades of the independence era. It establishes that the type of reading material in circulation by the public library of the Irish Free State’s second-largest city was substantially in conflict with the nation-building ideology of Irish-Ireland. I demonstrate this disparity by comparing the Cork Public Library’s accession records, which document the titles acquired for its children’s collection, with other source material that illustrates the pervasive public discourse which held that British culture was incompatible with — indeed, harmful to — Irish Catholic standards. Children were presented as particularly susceptible to the messages encoded in their reading matter. Hence, text was both potentially a useful communicator of the values which the new state wished to cultivate in its young citizens and a source of contamination in a nation striving to de-anglicise itself. Other societies which have recently experienced major socio-political transformations have often leveraged children’s literature as a medium through which to socialise children into the new value system adopted by such societies. However, in Ireland, the conditions necessary to facilitate a thriving indigenous English-language publishing industry were limited. Therefore, the children’s collection in Cork Public Library continued to be dominated by British publications, a situation little changed from the colonial period. Nonetheless, a small body of English-language books produced by Irish writers and Irish publishing houses did emerge. This study analyses the children’s titles in circulation by the library during the time-frame, as well as providing a close textual analysis of three under-researched texts by Irish authors. It also indicates the ambivalent position in which libraries found themselves in this period, as repositories of stock out of step with the de-anglicisation momentum.en
dc.description.statusNot peer revieweden
dc.description.versionAccepted Version
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdfen
dc.identifier.citationMooney, M. 2019. Recovering children’s reading: “Queer Treasures” of the Children’s Collection in Cork Public Library, 1922–1939. PhD Thesis, University College Cork.en
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10468/8654
dc.language.isoenen
dc.publisherUniversity College Corken
dc.relation.urihttps://cora.ucc.ie/items/4a79a7f8-c430-4896-bd69-0c5340964d8c
dc.rights© 2019, Mairéad Mooney.en
dc.rights.urihttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/en
dc.subjectCork Public Libraryen
dc.subjectIrish Free Stateen
dc.subjectPost-independenceen
dc.subjectReadingen
dc.subjectJames Wilkinsonen
dc.subjectDe-anglicisationen
dc.subjectMarie Conrayvilleen
dc.subjectJames O'Mahoneyen
dc.subjectT. C. Bridgesen
dc.subjectM. Ó Leannainen
dc.subjectM. H. Gaffneyen
dc.subjectChildren's Books Irelanden
dc.subjectCitizenshipen
dc.subjectPublishing in Irelanden
dc.subjectCorken
dc.subjectLibrariesen
dc.subjectChildren's literatureen
dc.subjectNation buildingen
dc.subjectAccession recordsen
dc.subjectLibrary booksen
dc.titleRecovering children’s reading: “Queer Treasures” of the Children’s Collection in Cork Public Library, 1922–1939en
dc.typeDoctoral thesisen
dc.type.qualificationlevelDoctoralen
dc.type.qualificationnamePhDen
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