Anthony McNicholas, Politics, Religion and the Press: Irish Journalism in Mid-Victorian England

摘要

Particularly as a result of the famine in Ireland during the 1840s, there existed a substantial diasporic community of Irish people in England. More and more is coming to light about them, but so far little has been studied of what they themselves wrote, about their own lives and times, and their own views and values. Anthony McNicholas investigates the Irish press in England in the 1860s, a decade in which Irish politics was dominated by Fenianism. Both the Roman Catholic Church and secular nationalists wanted at this time to address and communicate with a migrant Irish reading public, though for their own distinctive reasons. The interplay between the Catholic Church and the separatist politics of the Fenian movement is the particular focus of McNicholas's study. The bulk of the book is devoted to three London newspapers: the Universal News, the Irish Liberator and the Irish News. McNicholas identifies four factors that can be applied as a measure of Irish influence: ownership, journalistic and editorial authorship, readership and address - the voice with which a newspaper spoke to its readers. For him, it is address that is crucial, for it tells us not only who the paper was aimed at, but what their cultural identities and political affiliations were most likely to be.