Mediae Noctis Consilium — the first edition of Brian Merriman’s Cúirt an Mheán Oíche
Abstract
This article discusses the first printed edition of the Brian Merriman’s acclaimed poem Cúirt an Mheán Oíche and how the editor, publisher and bookseller John O’Daly published it under the Latin title Mediae Noctis Consilium, sometime in the 1860s or 1870s. The edition contains a false publication date, a mock publisher and place of publication, and no editor is mentioned. Though far from being an authentic scholarly edition of Cúirt an Mheán Oíche, this edition by O’Daly shows a nineteenth-century publisher exploiting the creative possibilities of the editing and publication processes. Though Merriman’s comic masterpiece lent itself to O’Daly’s mockery, there may also have been a business element to aspects of the book’s publication, particularly O’Daly’s claims to have only printed a limited run of the text. The article focusses on the date of publication, on O’Daly’s editorial relationship with Standish Hayes O’Grady, and on the light the publication throws on nineteenth-century editorial and publishing practices.
Please note
COMHARTaighde is an open access, peer-reviewed scholarly journal in the field of Irish language and literature studies. The full text of the article described on this page is available in the Irish language only. English-language translations of article titles, abstracts and certain metadata are provided in order to enable international scholars to discover research published in COMHARTaighde and to facilitate the indexing of articles in certain academic databases.
