Provincial Directories
John Ferrar's Directory of Limerick, published in 1769, was the first directory to deal specifically with a provincial town, and the practice spread throughout Munster in the remaining decades of the eighteenth century, with Cork particularly well covered. In the nineteenth century, local directories were produced in abundance, especially in areas with a strong commercial identity, such as Belfast and the North East and, again, Munster.
The quality and coverage of these varies widely, from the street by street listings in Martin's 1839 Belfast Directory to the barest of commercial lists.
County lists of directories are given in the counties section of this site. These lists cannot, however, be regarded as complete; many small, local publications, especially from the first half of the nineteenth century, are now quite rare, with only one or two surviving copies. Locating these can be extremely difficult. Some guides are:
James Carty, National Library of Ireland Bibliography of Irish History 1870 1911, Dublin, 1940
Edward Evans, Historical and Bibliographical Account of Almanacks, Directories etc., in Ireland from the Sixteenth Century , Dublin, 1897
M.E. Keen, A Bibliography of Trade Directories of the British Isles in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 1979.
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