HISTORY, IT SEEMS, is a bestseller Irish readers just can't put down. From the Civil War to the Celtic Tiger, books on Irish social and economic history continue to be cash cows for Irish publishers and authors, writes Brian O'Connell.
Walk into any Waterstone's or Eason outlet, and you'll notice history and biography titles dominating the shelves. Since 2001, the Irish market in history books has been worth over €20 million, with some 21,000 individual titles sold in that period. In contrast to other genres, the general trend is that history books in Ireland will sell more and remain in print longer.
Some, such as TW Moody and FX Martin's The Course of Irish History, first published in 1966, and more recently David McWilliams's The Pope's Children, have both sold upwards of 100,000 copies. Even a specialised local history study, such as The Burning Of Cork, can expect to ship between 5,000 and 10,000 copies, if marketed correctly.
Fergal Tobin, managing editor of Gill & Macmillan, traces our national obsession with history books back to the emergence of the Troubles in the late 1960s, which in turn sparked a significant re-engagement with our past. "I think there has certainly been more of an appetite for history books in Ireland than other markets," says Tobin. "This was especially true during the Troubles, which came like a thunderbolt to a certain generation, and made understanding the past a more urgent intellectual task."
Tobin draws parallels with trends in present-day France, whereby books on the first World War are in huge demand, as society there comes to terms with its role during the war years. In Ireland too, the Troubles led Irish society to re-examine aspects of its past, which had been evaded up to that point.
The growth of history book publishing has also been driven, in part, by a ready-made market for the titles in the US, where some 50 million people claim Irish ancestry. However, Tobin feels that market may be tightening. "I think that international demand is no longer as strong. One reason is the ending of the Troubles. The other is that the degree of interest has weakened post-9/11 and the whole focus has now moved to the Middle East."
Trends are developing in Ireland, too. While the genre remains strong, the type of history book readers are going for has changed.
"In general, the market here has been moving away from academic and scholarly works towards more mid-market non-specialist interest," says Tobin. "Areas that remain strong, though, include general survey histories and biographies, such as Diarmuid Ferriter's recent work on De Valera, and also books like our own Tom Garvin's Preventing the Future. Both of these sold astonishingly well."
TO HIGHLIGHT HOW the market can sometimes punch above its weight, Tobin highlights The Pope's Children, published by Gill & Macmillan.
"I had expected a book like that to sell somewhere between 5,000 and 20,000 copies," Tobin says, "There has been increased appetite for more social history, certainly, but even allowing for that, The Pope's Childrenwas a stunning success, selling over 100,000 copies."
The key to the book's success, Tobin believes, was that it offered the first really coherent and plausible hypothesis about the state of modern Ireland. "It was well-written and very entertaining," he says, "It has a strong base in economic analysis, which people might normally find boring. Yet here was someone explaining underlying economics behind the boom in terms ordinary people could understand and also get a laugh at. That's a recipe for success."
HISTORIAN DIARMUID FERRITER is an example of a writer who has benefited from the strength of the market here, enjoying both academic and popular success. He is also first to acknowledge that his recent book, Judging Dev, sold beyond many expectations, including his own.
"I underestimated the strength of feeling still present for the subject," he says. "I got letters from so many readers relaying memories. The book sold 30,000 copies - we didn't expect anything like that."
The reasons for the strength of the market have a lot to do with the politicised nature of Irish society, Ferriter believes.
"We are naturally very curious about the past," he says, "Remember that for an older generation, they were deprived access to information about periods such as the Civil War and the War of Independence. They are now hungry for information about those periods. I gave the De Valera book to my father-in-law, for instance, and he said that it contained the stuff they never told them in school."
Organisers at next month's Dublin Book Festival can also testify to the continued appeal of history as a subject. One of the events, a panel discussion titled Big Fellow, Long Fellow: Michael Collins and Éamon De Valera, is proving to be one of the most popular events, despite competing with a host of other national and international readings.
A spokesperson noted: "The prominence of the history discussion on the festival program highlights the fact that non-fiction, and particularly history, is still the bread and butter of many Irish publishers."
Ferriter believes there is more to come. Certain aspects of our past remain under-represented, he argues, namely areas of recent social history.
"I've been struck over the last 10 years by more and more work being done of social history, particularly the 'hidden Ireland' as I call it, such as the history of sex. There's a lot of material there, but I suppose the question remains whether or not people will plough into it with the same appetite as the old reliables."
The fact that readers will take issue with written accounts makes for a healthy and vibrant genre, Ferriter says. "It makes a huge difference if you get feedback. People in this country still write letters - they might disagree profoundly with what you write, but getting communication is very important. You don't feel like you're in this ivory tower working for a small elite."
Mercier Press commissioning editor Eoin Purcell agrees that history books are not confined to a particular reader demographic, and instead enjoy broad appeal.
"The interest is also not confined to a particular area of history," he argues. "It ranges from broad studies on major events to more localised investigations. There is also a market for taking well-known stories or figures, such as Tom Barry or Seán Treacy, and putting them into a more accessible context." Some of Mercier's most notable successes include The Course of Irish History, which was first published in the late 1960s, and continues to sell annually.
Others, such as The Great Irish Famineand A Short History of Ireland, have also done extremely well, selling 60,000 copies between them.
"Irish history is one of the issues every generation feels it needs to re-tell," says Purcell. "You might find books on the same subject emerging every 10 years, but trends change and writers differ, so the way we look backwards also changes. This keeps the market vibrant."
In terms of what might be popular in the years ahead, Purcell is slow to highlight specifics. "It's hard to know. I keep thinking the next great area of interest in the genre will be the history of the Celtic Tiger, or maybe military histories of Ireland. It's such a difficult market to predict. There has always been an interest in history one way or the other because people are always trying to understand their past in order to inform their future. I don't see that changing anytime soon."