Amazon.com description: Product Description: This book details the history of the spread of printing and literacy in eighteenth century Ireland. In addition to being a historical survey, it is also a study, in the "media ecological" vein, that explores what happens when a new technology is introduced to a given culture. This work answers three key questions: first, why did print technology take so long (300 years after Gutenberg) to become a cultural influence in Ireland; second, why was there an "explosion" of printing and presses in Ireland between 1750 and 1800; and finally, why, when a printing industry had been established, was almost the entire output of printed literature in English rather than the Irish language?