The Shan Van Vocht (1896–1899) and The Leader (1900–1936): National Identity in Advertising

A good newspaper … is a nation talking to itselfArthur Miller (interview in the Observer, 26 November 1961)In late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Irish newspapers and periodicals, we can identify a relationship between contemporary print culture and the sense of an emerging nationhood. As we saw in Chapter 1, various permutations of nationalist support filtered into consumer culture during the Irish Revival, informed by the Home Rule campaign, the Literary Revival, the Gaelic League, constitutional nationalism and more militant separatism. Such advertising, indeed, offers an insight into the subtle variances at work under the umbrella of the national cause. During the 1890s and early 1900s, when cultural nationalism was at its zenith, with debates surrounding Irish Ireland and the Gaelic League highly topical, there was a perceptible preoccupation with national identity in many Irish periodicals and, indeed, the advertising material present in those publications. This chapter offers a comparative study of two of the key journals within the nationalist tradition: The Shan Van Vocht (1896–1899) and The Leader (1900– 1936), the former much preoccupied with the role of women in nationalism and the other characterised by a certain hypermasculinity.