Duffy"s business would become one of the major publishers of Irish nationalist books, bibles, magazines, Missals and religious texts throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. He was also a major publisher of Irish fiction. He then traveled to Liverpool where he traded them for more valuable books
Boney"s Oraculum would later be the object of an allusion in a speech of Captain
Boyle in Sean O"Casey"s 1924 play Juno and the Paycock. By the 1860s he was employing 120 staff members at his various enterprises in Dublin.
In 1860 he started Duffy"s Hibernian Magazine. Two years later he followed this up with Duffy"s Hibernian Sixpence Magazine.
These and other relatively cheap magazines took advantage of the new-found confidence in home-grown literature and also offered an outlet for Irish authors.
Among the magazines he published were:
Duffy"s Irish Catholic Magazine (1847)
Catholic Guardian
Christian Family Library
Duffy"s Hibernian Magazine
Illustrated Dublin Journal
Duffy"s Fireside Magazine: A Monthly Miscellany (November 1850–October 1852) (price: 4d)
Duffy"s Hibernian Sixpence Magazine (ceased publication in 1864)
Duffy"s magazines are seen as a forerunner of Ireland"s Own today. Among books he published were:
The Spirit of the Nation. Ballads and Songs by the Writers of The Nation, with Original and Ancient Music (1845)
The Poetry of Ireland.
Further collections from the writers of The Nation (1845-1846)
The Ballad Poetry of Ireland
The Book of Irish Ballads
an 1861 edition of the Douay Bible, a copy of which is owned by the Central Catholic Library in Dublin
John O"Hart, Irish landed gentry: when Cromwell came to Ireland (Dublin: James Duffy & Sons, 1887)
Gerald Griffin The Invasion (Dublin, James Duffy & Sons)
The publishing house was based at 7 Wellington Quay, Dublin, and later at 14 & 15 Wellington Quay.
James Duffy and Company Limited. of 38 Westmoreland Street was still in business in the late 20th century.
