I found on Abebooks that a company called Nabu Press has reprinted this book by Patrick S. Dinneen, for $12. It is quite good - the text inside is a facsimile reproduction of the original seanachló text. It is exactly the same as PDF on archive.org, and has a blurred page 90 - the company explained that any defects will be reproduced - including those in the scanning process (and it is obvious Nabu Press used the archive.org PDF to produce this). Apart from that it is fine. The book is 103 pages long.

But the oddest thing about it is that Nabu Press used the wrong font on the cover of the reproduction book - and so it says: MUINNTEAR ?IARRAI?E ROI? AN DRO?-?AO?AL, with question marks replacing lenited letters. Of course this doesn't affect the inside, which is a just a photocopy of the PDF of the scanned images, but it gives the book a wierd title.

This and other problems come up with reprinting the large bulk of gems from the past. And I think this presents a greater challenge to putting the old gems into print again than any of the other theories from the other thread. Even if the old works were published with updated spelling, someone would have to do that work. Even if it is put into old spelling in Roman type, someone has to do that. Or the older type, again someone has to do that. The photographic reprints are a patch job at best, and the good ones take a lot of human imput also. What you really want are retypeset volumes.

Nabu Press is most likely one of the many publishers which is making money off of the public domain PDFs created. Literally there is a computer on autopilot pushing this stuff out. There are numerous publishers which do this, and to be quite honest, most of it is crap. You'd be better of getting the PDF and printing it yourself.

A company that really wants to reprint the old works would do this:

1. Run the scan through tanscription software.
2. A HUMAN would proof read the transcription (hopefully twice), and FORMAT the work.

The big factor missing is the HUMAN. That's why you have crap computer non-sense on the front of the book. There is a desire to put old books into print again, but we have to do it right. In the mean time, you get what you pay for, hopefully.

I am speaking from experience here. I have a VERY SMALL publishing company (just me). I have one book since 2008. I've been working on the second since then off and on. It takes a lot of work to make a quality book. Or you get crap when a computer does it. I wouldn't put crap under my name, though, and I won't print anything and everything that was ever bound. Nabu Press has absolutely no interest in the Irish language, I can betchya.

An 'IARRAI?E' title go siúráilte :D

By coincidence i came across a 1905 M H Gill agus a Mhac copy of this little book by Dineen recently. It had lost its front cover but was otherwise in quite good condition. This may not be the right forum but my query is: who actually composed the poetry, including several laments in the style of 'Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire' which are embedded in the prose text. Was it the author himself? He quotes freely from various Latin sources which he attributes but also some 'seanfhocail' and snatches of folk verses which of course are not attributable, but this leaves me wondering about the authorship of the unattributed longer poetry.

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