The Edinburgh Companion to Irish Literature and Periodical Culture
Edited by Elke D’hoker and Phyllis Boumans
Edinburgh University Press, 2026
The Edinburgh Companion to Irish Literature and Periodical Culture offers a wide-ranging reassessment of Irish literary history through the lens of periodical culture. Bringing together thirty original contributions, the volume examines the manifold interactions between Irish literature and newspapers, magazines and literary journals from the nineteenth century to the present.
Periodicals have played a crucial role not only in publishing literary works, but also in supporting writers, shaping literary tastes, codifying genres and creating networks of circulation and exchange. By foregrounding these functions, the Companion challenges and complements established narratives of Irish literary history, demonstrating how attention to periodical culture can shed new light on both canonical authors and less familiar voices.
The volume brings together scholarship at the intersection of Irish studies, periodical studies, literary history and the digital humanities. Its contributors draw on archival and digital research to investigate the different agents involved in periodical networks—including authors, editors, publishers, illustrators, translators and readers—and to explore the collaborative practices through which literary culture was produced and circulated.
A strong transnational dimension runs throughout the collection. Individual chapters consider the circulation and reception of Irish writers in British and American periodicals, as well as the presence of international writers in Irish magazines. These perspectives reveal the periodical press as an important site of cultural mediation, allowing Irish literature to be understood within networks that extend well beyond national boundaries.
The Companion also demonstrates the potential of periodical research to revise the literary canon. Alongside new perspectives on writers such as James Joyce, Mary Lavin, John McGahern and Emily Lawless, it recovers publications and authors that have received comparatively little critical attention. Periodicals including A Celtic Christmas, The Honest Ulsterman, Kilkenny Magazine, Broadsheet, The Dubliner and Surge are examined as significant sites of literary production in their own right.
The Edinburgh Companion to Irish Literature and Periodical Culture makes a case for placing periodicals at the heart of our understanding of Irish literary and cultural history.
About the Editors
Elke D’hoker is Full Professor of English Literature at KU Leuven and Director of the Leuven Centre for Irish Studies. Her research encompasses Irish fiction, the modern short story, periodical studies and literary pedagogy. Her publications include Irish Women Writers and the Modern Short Story (2016), and she has edited or co-edited numerous collections on Irish literature and short fiction.
Phyllis Boumans is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Radboud Institute for Culture and History at Radboud University Nijmegen. Her research focuses on Irish literature and periodical culture, with current work exploring mid-twentieth-century Irish radio stories. Her publications have appeared in journals including Irish University Review, New Hibernia Review and Irish Studies Review.
Discover the book and read “6 Things You Probably Didn’t Know about Irish Literature and Periodical Culture” on the Edinburgh University Press blog.