The Lilliput Press is an independent publishing house and bookshop located in Stoneybatter, Dublin. It was founded in 1984 by Anthony Farrell.
Antony Farrell started off as an editor working in London and then founded Lilliput Press while living on his mother’s farm in County Westmeath. The Press moved to its current location in 1989.
The Lilliput Press has published over 600 titles of Irish interest, in the areas of literary fiction, memoir, art, music, photography, philosophy, etc. It’s also known for discovering new talents, for example, Donal Ryan, Rob Doyle and Elske Rahill.
Farrell mentions he prefers to work with authors and develop them, rather than picking individual books. According to him, one of the biggest differences between Ireland and the UK’s literary industry is the scale, arguing that in Ireland ‘you can get directly to authors’.
The Lilliput Press creates a sense of intimacy, from their close relationship with authors to the cosiness in the store.
As part of the Dublin Book Festival 2019, the Press organised a speakeasy event, sponsored by Jameson, to remember J.P. Donleavy’s and celebrate his final novel, ‘A Letter Marked Personal‘, which was published by Lilliput Press posthumously last month.
‘A Letter Marked Personal’, Donleavy’s ‘portrait of a flawed Anglophile delineates the American Dream, from aspirational greed to the vanity of human wishes.’
The night was filled with whiskey, music by Patrick Carolan, and dim lighting, perfectly setting the scene. As written in the Irish times, quoting Hunter S. Thompson, “reading Mr Donleavy is no longer like being dragged into a beer-brawl in some violent Irish pub, but more like sitting down to an evening of good whiskey and mad laughter in a rare conversation somewhere on the edge of reality.”
Dr. Rory Patrick Feehan read extracts from ‘The Ginger Man‘, ‘A Letter Marked Personal’, and other works. And also discussed the relation between Donleavy’s and Hunter S. Thompson’s work, author of ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas‘ and founder of the Gonzo journalism movement.
The Lilliput Press is celebrating their 35th anniversary in business.
