James Wilkinson was librarian of Cork city{\textquoteright}s public library from the inauguration of the service in 1892 until his retirement in 1933, stewarding it through a forty-year tenure which was characterised by major political and social change. Having commenced his post in Cork during the reign of Queen Victoria, Wilkinson{\textquoteright}s career was punctuated by the upheavals attendant on World War I, the War of Independence and the Irish Civil War. The War of Independence {\textendash} also referred to as the Anglo-Irish War {\textendash} was particularly significant for Wilkinson, as the purpose-built Carnegie Free Library became a casualty, a short-lived fifteen years after its opening, when crown forces set fire to Cork city on the night of 11 December 1920. The library premises, which included living quarters for Wilkinson and his family, and its stock of 14,000 volumes were destroyed.\
It is thanks to Wilkinson{\textquoteright}s herculean efforts that a temporary library was established, followed by the construction of a superior purpose-built facility which opened in 1930. The accession record ledgers document the re-establishment of the library{\textquoteright}s collections, with the first title recorded on 6 February 1922, the month after the Anglo-Irish peace treaty had been ratified. Thus, the birth of the Irish Free State (later, the Republic of Ireland) converged with the re-birth of Cork Public Library (CPL). \
It would therefore seem to have been a timely opportunity to assemble library collections representative of the new state{\textquoteright}s drive towards deanglicisation, particularly the children{\textquoteright}s collection, given the perceived importance of the child as inheritor of the independent nation. However, analysis of the children{\textquoteright}s titles acquired by the library between 1922 and the outbreak of World War II demonstrates a surprising continuity with typical colonial period texts, largely maintaining the incontrovertible justice of imperial Britain{\textquoteright}s cultural and political superiority to other nations. Based on accession records evidence examined in their historical context, this chapter considers whether James Wilkinson, a Protestant Englishman, was a reactionary whose views were out of sympathy with postcolonial Ireland or, rather, a radical who recognised that children were not passive and uncritical assimilators of their recreational reading. \
}, year = {2018}, journal = {Radical Collections: Re-examining the Roots of Collections, Practice and Information Professions}, pages = {9-21}, publisher = {University of London}, address = {London, England}, isbn = {9781913002008}, language = {English}, }