From an Oral to a Print Tradition: The Case of the Islandman (1854–1937)

This chapter focuses on the life, education, literacy levels (in English and Irish), and especially the library and reading habits of Tomás Ó Criomthain (Thomas O’Crohan), ‘The Islandman’. A native Irish speaker from the Great Blasket Island in West Kerry, he was schooled when the ‘national’ schools did not teach children to read or write in Irish, even in Gaeltacht areas, but he went on to write numerous books and to pioneer Blasket literature. The chapter explores Ó Criomthain’s reading, the marked interest in particular works by Maxim Gorky and Pierre Loti, and in world literature in general, including texts about isolated communities and rural workers, partly as an alternative to the dominance of English and urban culture. Ó Criomthain’s career (as a reader, collector, and writer) embodies Gaelic Ireland’s transition from orality to print culture, and its openness to wider international influence.