As is so often the case in the study of periodicals, concrete evidence about influence and impact is hard to find, and we are repeatedly forced to rely on the statements provided by the magazines themselves: circulation figures, when advertised, are frequently inflated, boasts about a title's national importance are often puffs written by friends of editors. In Ireland, the situation is compounded by the fact that domestic periodicals were always in direct competition with those originating in England and Scotland, so that the self-reporting of inflated sales figures occasionally served purposes beyond the obvious. Further, it was recognised that the Irish domestic market for periodicals would always be partly comprised of Irish readers living abroad; consequently, declared circulation most often included the figures gathered from agents in cities such as Manchester and Liverpool. The ways in which English and Irish periodicals were intertwined make it difficult to try and claim too much about the place and cultural force of any particular Irish title. However, the argument that follows suggests processes through which a cultural re-thinking of material history was performed, at least for a short space of time, within the pages of an Irish weekly: the Dublin Penny Journal, that did try to focus on Ireland, that assumed an intelligent and curious readership, and that provided original material of high quality.

The most difficult period for periodical production in Ireland, in terms of new titles published, as well as the quality and longevity of those titles, was the 30 years following the Act of Union in 1800. By contrast, the (roughly) 20-year period between 1830 and the famine years at the end of the 1840s saw an explosion of new titles, though the lifespan of most of them was still no more than a year. The reasons for this dramatic increase are numerous: they include greater political stability in the country, Catholic Emancipation in 1829, the coming of age of many of Ireland's greatest nineteenth-century literary figures (Lever, Lover, Le Fanu, Carleton, Hall, Banim, etc.) whose works appeared most often in serial form, the rise of Mechanics’ Institutes and the associated drive for public education, as well as the establishment, or re-invigoration of literary and scientific societies like the Royal Irish Academy.