GILL, Conrad. The Rise of the Irish Linen Industry. With numerous illustrations and folding map.

Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925. pp. xii, 359. Blue cloth, title in gilt on spine. Light stain to cover. Ex lib Antrim County Library, with stamp. New endpapers. A very good copy in repaired dust wrapper. Very scarce.
Linen was Ireland’s most important manufacturing industry during the 18th and 19th centuries. It was largely based in Ulster where there had been a tradition of flax cultivation and linen manufacture, on the whole for domestic consumption, prior to the plantation of Ulster. New skills and knowledge brought by the Planters enabled linen to become the leading export from the Ulster region. Exports increased from about 2 million yards in 1713 to over 47 million yards in 1796. From the middle of the 18th century yarn spinning began to spread westwards into Connacht and also into north Leinster, increasing the supply to the major weaving districts in Ulster. The author’s main purpose in writing this authoritative work was three fold: to show why the north of Ireland became the chief centre of linen manufacture in the world; secondly, to discover the part played by successive governments in the process; thirdly, to trace the change from domestic to factory production.

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