James Duffy (Irish publisher)

James Duffy (1809 in Monaghan – 4 July 1871) was a prominent 19th-century Irish author and publisher.

Career

Duffy was educated at a hedge school and began his business as a bookseller through purchasing Protestant bibles given to Catholics. He then traveled to Liverpool where he traded them for more valuable books. In 1830 he founded his own company, James Duffy and Sons and issued Boney's Oraculum, or Napoleon's Book of Fate, which experienced huge sales. Boney's Oraculum would later be the object of an allusion in a speech of Capt. Boyle in Sean O'Casey's 1924 play Juno and the Paycock.^[1]

Duffy's business would become one of the major publishers of Irish nationalist books, bibles, magazines, Missals and religious texts throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. He was described as having "invented a new kind of cosy family Catholicism."^[2]

Among the magazines he published were:

• Duffy's Irish Catholic Magazine (1847)
• Catholic Guardian
• Christian Family Library
• Duffy's Hibernian Magazine
• Illustrated Dublin Journal
• Duffy's Fireside Magazine: A Monthly Miscellany (November 1850–October 1852) (price: 4d)
• Duffy's Hibernian Sixpence Magazine (ceased publication in 1864)

Duffy's magazines are seen as a forerunner for Ireland's Own today.

Among books he published were:

• The Spirit of the Nation. Ballads and Songs by the Writers of 'The Nation', with Original and Ancient Music (1845)
• an 1861 edition of the Douay Bible, a copy of which is owned by the Central Catholic Library in Dublin
• John O'Hart, Irish landed gentry: when Cromwell came to Ireland (Dublin: James Duffy & Sons, 1887)
• John O’Hanlon, Lives of the Irish Saints, Vol 6 (James Duffy and Sons, 1891)
• Gerald Griffin The Invasion (Dublin, James Duffy & Sons)

Publishing House

The publishing house was based at 7 Wellington Quay, Dublin, and later at 14 & 15 Wellington Quay. James Duffy and Co. Ltd. of 38 Westmoreland Street was still in business in the late 20th century.^[1]

Footnotes