Following their Spring and Summer editions this year, there is now a new Dublin Review of Books available at www.drb.ie This is not, however, as might be expected, the Autumn 2012 edition but the beginning of a new drb, with greatly enhanced content and a new model of publication.
From November this year the Dublin Reivew of Books will be publishing in four distinct categories:
Essays the type of long-form exploration of a subject, normally hung on a new book, that we have specialised in since our first issue back in March 2007;
Reviews, which will normally be more closely focused on the book being considered and will be shorter, though still often longer than most newspaper reviews;
Blog posts on a wide range of topics but including in particular the history of Dublin, the lives and working practices of writers and
artists, the history and future of book publishing and bookselling;
New books: short extracts will give some indication of the wide range of new material that is being published.
In addition to its new content, the drb has also changed its publication model: new material will no longer appear in large blocs through four editions a year but will be published continuously on the site, with blog posts appearing every day or several times a week, short reviews being added constantly and essays and new titles initially being published in groups every fortnight. The cumulative effect of these changes is that the review will publish much more material: in terms of longer essays, for example, up to twice as many as previously.
Editors Maurice Earls and Enda O’Doherty say “Creating the new drb has involved the editors and our web designers and developers, amweb, in a long and challenging process. It is not over yet. Further features will be added over the next few weeks, in particular to enhance and simplify access to our archive. And of course there may still be some glitches: we hope you will be patient with us and that these will be ironed out in the coming weeks.”
From the new Dublin Review of Books
John Horgan reads a biography of the most famous crusading journalist of the Victorian era and asks if investigative journalism in the newspaper sector has lost its edge.
Stephen Wilson profiles the late Gore Vidal, a patrician, a radical in a very American tradition, and a great essayist and (sometimes) novelist.
Enda O’Doherty asks what is the essence of Austenism and finds it in the novels’ celebrations of wit and intelligence rather than morality.
In the first of a two-part series, Brendan O’Leary looks at the quirks of the American electoral system as America chooses a president and examines the shifting traditions which have created the big support blocs for the two parties.
John Bradley argues for a focus not on the finance sector but on the real economy.
David Askew recounts the sparkling career, on both stage and parliament, of Richard Brinsley Sheridan.
Cormac Ó Grada looks at the long, slow decline of the Irish language in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Siobhán Parkinson argues that English is not enough: learning other languages will make us smarter and more successful.
Morten Høi Jensen enjoys Enrique Vila-Matas’s complex and playful games with literature.
Maurice Earls explores the tensions between the constitutional and insurrectionary traditions in the nineteenth century.
Aengus Woods surveys the apocalyptic fiction of László Krasznahorkai,
Brenna Katz Clarke is not so impressed by JK Rowling’s first venture into adult fiction and Brian Earls enjoys a richly textured study of Dublin during the First World War.
They have blog posts on JM Synge, Dr Johnson’s rough way with books, writers who also plied another trade and the history of Dublin’s Dawson Street. New titles extracted include poetry from John McAuliffe, a study of US policy in the Middle East and a critical biography of the dramatist Stewart Parker.
