Cover to Dublin Opinion Vol. IV No 37, March 1925, by Arthur Booth
Dublin Opinion was a monthly satirical magazine published in Dublin from 1922 to 1968.
It was founded by cartoonists Arthur Booth and Charles E. Kelly and writer Tom Collins, who met as amateur dramatists. Booth was its first editor, and drew the covers. Its satire was gentle and politically it steered a careful middle course. The first issue, financed by a loan from a friend of Booth and published on 1 March 1922, had a print run of 3,000 and sold out, but the second issue sold poorly. From issue 3 it was distributed by Easons and was soon selling 40,000 copies a month. When Booth died of pneumonia in 1926, Kelly, Collins and Booth's father-in-law Major Robert J. Baker formed Dublin Opinion Ltd, and Collins and Kelly took over as editors, Kelly becoming chief artist.
Aside from its founders, it featured contributions from:
- William Beckett ("Maskee")
- G. R. Brentwood
- Meredith Brosnan
- Beatrice Campbell
- Eileen Coghlan
- W. H. Conn
- Seán Coughlan
- Louis D'Alton
- Rowel Friers
- Grace Gifford
- Bill Glenn (the regular "Ballyscunnion" series)
- Mícheál MacLiammóir
- Stan Millar
- Evin Nolan
- James O'Donnell
- Till
From a peak of 60,000 copies a month, sales began to decline in the mid 1960s. Kelly and Collins wound the magazine up in 1967, and sold it to Louis O'Sullivan in 1968. It was relaunched under the editorship of Lelia Doolan and Joe Dowling, but did not last.
See also[]
References[]
- Frank Kelly, "The Story of Dublin Opinion", The Political Cartoon Society
- Ballyscullion website
- Thomas J. Collins & Charles E. Kelly (eds.), Fifteen Years of Dublin Opinion, Dublin Opinion Ltd, 1937
- Pauric J. Dempsey and Bridget Hourican, "Booth, Arthur James Conry", Dictionary of Irish Biography, Cambridge University Press, 2010
- Anne Dolan, "Kelly, Charles Edward", Dictionary of Irish Biography, Cambridge University Press, 2010
- Anne Dolan, "Collins, Thomas Joseph", Dictionary of Irish Biography, Cambridge University Press, 2010