Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dolmen Press


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   keep. (non-admin closure) – Davey 2010 Talk 17:31, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

Dolmen Press

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There are claims to WP:NOTABILITY but not substantiated. Seems promotional. Has been tagged for notability for 7 years; hopefully it can now be resolved. Boleyn (talk) 11:38, 30 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Ireland-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 00:49, 2 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Literature-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 00:49, 2 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Business-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 00:49, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

Keep per the significant coverage in multiple independent reliable sources.  The subject is discussed in Chapter 25 of this book. The book notes on page 11: "The failings of state-sponsored attempts to control the direction of book culture through censorship of Irish language publishing were obvious. But for the shining exception represented by the Dolmen Press (established in 1951 and discussed by Derval Tubridy in Chapter 25) little was to change in the world of Irish publishing during the 1950s—a period of very heavy emigration—until late in that decade when new economic policies were introduced." The book notes on page 591: "Though initially it seemed like a hazardous venture, the range of publications and the quality of the editions marked the Dolmen Press out as an extraordinary publishing house which rejuvenated Irish literature and criticism, and further advanced the tradition of illustration begun with the illuminated manuscripts of early Christian times. The man behind this achievement has been described as 'a new kind of impresario and a reinventor of prevailing tradition.' Typographer, artist, architect, set-designer, Yeats scholar, and philatelist, Liam Miller played a vital role in the development of a new generation of poets and writers of the 1950s and 1960s in Ireland, making possible, as one writer notes, 'a normal career, one volume evolving from another.' With his tremendous eye for design Miller brought the art back into publishing, encouraging collaboration between artists and writers, sourcing the very best in materials and ensuring that Dolmen Press books were of the highest standard. For Louis le Brocquy, Miller 'was an artist enraptured by a vision of perfection for its own sake, by an overriding concern for the thing itself.'" The book notes on pages 633–634: "The Dolmen Press ceased business following the death of Liam Miller in 1987 and the firm's archive is now in the Z Smyth Reynolds Library in Wake Forest University in North Carolina." The book notes on pages 1–2: "A few salient details may be drawn from the example of Heaney's publishing history. Heaney is one amoung a number of major twentieth century Irish writers to establish a literary career in London, and then desire publication in Ireland. At the very beginning of his career, in 1964, he sent a collection of poems to the leading Irish cultural publisher of this era, the Dolmen Press in Dublin, which was run by Liam Miller (1924–87), a distinguished book designer with great enthusiasm for fine literature and printing." The book notes on page 110: "In addition to these major players there existed a plethora of smaller firms, many of which were miniscule in size, short-livved in their duration, and frankly non-commercial in their activities (being little more than hobbies for their owners). A small number of these private presses, most notably the Cuala Press from 1908 to 1946, and later the Dolmen Press from 1951 to 1988, were dedicated to the publication of imaginative literature in beautiful hand printed form, and, in particular, to the promotion of the work of new writers."  The abstract notes: "With the publication of The Dolmen Miscellany (1962) and the inception of Poetry Ireland the same year, Liam Miller's Dolmen Press came to represent artistically and commercially Irish poets and their works within the Republic of Ireland and abroad. In Miller's publishing practice, the liberal notion of ‘Poetry Ireland’ had come to supplant a narrower one: the idea of the ‘Dolmen Poets.’ As the nineteen fifties drew to a close, the Dolmen Poets were Padraic Colum and Austin Clarke (but not Patrick Kavanagh), Richard Murphy, John Montague, and especially Thomas Kinsella. In Dolmen's earliest years, however, the notion of the ‘Dolmen Poets’ had entailed other figures – David Marcus, Donald Davie, Valentin Iremonger – as well as a “group” editorial method and small, economical print format suited to Dolmen's elementary technical facilities. When, in the ‘Dolmen Poets” format Miller printed the programme for the famous, three-way reading by Murphy, Montague, and Kinsella at the Royal Hibernian Hotel on 3 February 1961, both the occasion and the souvenir programme signalled Miller's embracing of the concept of ‘Poetry Ireland’." There is sufficient coverage in reliable sources to allow Dolmen Press to pass Notability, which requires "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject". Cunard (talk) 23:12, 3 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Keep/ The material above is excellent evidence of notability . I wish we had as much good sourcing for other notable publishers.  DGG ( talk ) 20:14, 4 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Withdraw nomination, you've convinced me. Thanks for your great work. Would you be able to add some of that to the article? Best wishes, Boleyn (talk) 20:33, 4 April 2015 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.