seeing some of the great cities of the world through the

LITERARY CITIES

Seeing some of the great cities of the world through the eyes of writers

Susannah Fullerton

DUBLIN

“When I die, Dublin will be written in my heart.”

James Joyce

James Joyce once claimed that if the city of Dublin were to be destroyed, it could be

rebuilt from the pages of his novel Ulysses. This extraordinary modernist novel, first

published in its entirety in Paris in 1922, chronicles one day in the life of Dublin resident

Leopold Bloom and is set in 1904. Bloom makes appointments, goes into pubs, eats meals,

meets friends, shops, and walks by the various monuments of his city. His day has been

recreated in Dublin and around the world on Bloom’s Day, but also throughout the year

by Dublin tourist guides and pub tour guides. Any walk through Dublin will evoke

memories of Ulysses. There is Davy Byrne’s pub where Bloom eats a gorgonzola sandwich

and drinks a glass of burgundy, Sweny’s pharmacy where he buys “lemony wax” soap,

Belvedere College where Stephen Dedalus studies, Bachelor’s Walk (where Bloom sees

about an advertisement), St George’s Church whose “constant peals” Bloom hears, and

Eccles St where the whole story begins with Bloom eating mutton kidneys for breakfast.

Just out of Dublin is Howth Head which features in several Joyce works, but most

Susannah Fullerton © 2016 https://susannahfullerton.com.au 1

memorably in Molly Bloom’s famous ‘Yes’ soliloquy at the end of Ulysses. James Joyce is

commemorated by a statue in North Earl Street, a bust in St Stephen’s Green, by the

excellent James Joyce Centre in North Great George’s Street and by the Martello Tower

museum in Sandycove.

Poet, playwright, novelist and short story writer, Oscar Wilde, was born in Dublin in 1854.

The home where he lived with his parents (both of whom were authors) is in Merrion

Square and is now part of an American college. Opposite the house, reclining on a rock, is

a statue of Oscar gazing at his home. He attended Trinity College and there won a

scholarship to Oxford. His parents were affluent and Oscar was given every educational

opportunity. George Bernard Shaw was not so lucky - he had a drunken father and

unhappily married parents and tried to escape by finding refuge in the kitchen and

drinking too much tea there. His birthplace is now a museum which gives a good

understanding of what formed GBS in the ten years he spent in the house. Samuel Beckett

was also a Dubliner by birth and he too studied, and taught, at Trinity College (where he

also excelled on the cricket team). A fabulous new ‘Samuel Beckett’ bridge over the Liffey

and a Samuel Beckett Theatre are his monuments within the city today. Jonathan Swift

was Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral. Swift’s birthplace has gone, but the cathedral provides

information about the remarkable author of A Modest Proposal and Gulliver’s Travels.

Ireland’s greatest poet, W.B. Yeats, was born in Sandymount, Dublin. The National Library

of Ireland has a wonderful multimedia exhibition on his life and works which can be

visited on-line. Yeats, along with his friend Lady Gregory, was closely involved in the

formation of the Abbey Theatre, the first state-subsidised theatre in the English-speaking

world. The Abbey has produced plays by Brendan Behan, John Millington Synge, Sean

O’Casey, George Bernard Shaw, and many other Irish writers. Brendan Behan was also

born in Dublin into a family of IRA sympathisers, and he died in a Dublin hospital. This

“drinker with a writing problem” had an all too intimate acquaintance with most of

Dublin’s pubs. A delightful statue of Behan sits at the side of the Royal Canal. Another

wonderful statue is of Dublin poet Patrick Kavanagh – he sits on a bench in Baggot Street

by the Grand Canal because of his poem Lines Written on a Seat on the Grand Canal:

‘O commemorate me where there is water

canal water preferably, so stilly

greeny at the heart of summer. Brother,

commemorate me thus beautifully.”


Poetry readings take place by the statue and there is a Poetry Award in Kavanagh’s name.

The city also hosts a Bram Stoker Festival in honour of the Dublin-born author of Dracula.

Dublin has several superb libraries – Trinity College Library with the famous Long Room

lined with busts of writers and philosophers and the treasured copy of the gorgeous Book

of Kells; Marsh’s Library with its cages where readers used to be locked in with valuable

books; and the Chester Beatty Library with its excellent Oriental collection. The Dublin

Writers Centre provides information and exhibitions about the many writers connected

with the city – it is housed in one of Dublin’s elegant Georgian townhouses. The University

of Trinity College has nurtured many aspiring writers – William Congreve, George

Farquahar, Oliver Goldsmith (whose statue stands outside the college), Edmund Burke,

Sheridan Le Fanu, Bram Stoker, John Millington Synge, Oliver St John Gogarty and Samuel

Beckett are just some of its literary alumni. The Catholic University College, of which John

Henry Newman was Rector, was where James Joyce, Padraig Pearse, Thomas MacDonagh,

Flann O’Brien, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Colm TóibÍn, Brian O’Nolan, Maeve Binchy, Roddy

Doyle, Kate O’Brien and Emma Donoghue once studied.

It is hard to go anywhere in Dublin without finding some literary association. There is the

River Liffey which forms the beginning and ending of Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake and

inspired his allegorical heroine Anna Livia Plurabelle. The river was once the recipient of a

gift of two swans by writer Oliver St John Gogarty. On St Stephen’s Green you can stay at

the gracious Shelbourne Hotel, visited by Thackeray and Kipling, used as a setting by

George Moore in A Dream in Muslin and written about by Elizabeth Bowen. Its Horseshoe

Bar was a drinking spot for Brendan Behan, Seamus Heaney and Patrick Kavanagh. In the

city centre is the General Post Office, still scarred by the bullets of the Easter Rising which

involved so many writers and which inspired Yeats’ Easter 1916 poem. The National

Gallery holds paintings by Jack Yeats, brother of the poet, while Toner’s Pub advertises

itself as being the only Dublin pub where Yeats ever enjoyed a drink (it was a glass of


sherry). Historic Kilmainham Gaol

still has graffiti written by poet and

playwright Padraig Pearse who,

along with fellow writers Joseph

Plunkett and Thomas MacDonagh,

was executed for his part in the

Easter Rising. Nationalist Robert

Emmet was once imprisoned there

– his love letter to Sarah Curran

inspired Percy Bysshe Shelley and

Thomas Moore (“She is far from

the land where her young hero

sleeps …”). Dublin has celebrated many of its writers with statues – songwriters Thomas

Moore and Thomas Davis both have statues, poet James Clarence Mangan has a bust at St

Stephen’s Green, and novelist Samuel Lover has a memorial in St Patrick’s, as does

religious writer Archbishop Richard Whately (an early admirer of Jane Austen). Molly

Malone, a fishmonger who died young, is remembered in a song which has inspired a

statue – she pushes her barrow along a city street and is much photographed by tourists.

The city’s green pillar post boxes are there thanks to novelist Anthony Trollope, who spent

many happy years working and writing in Dublin. Bridges have been named after Joyce,

Beckett, Sean O’Casey and Austin Clarke, streets have been named for many Dublin

authors, while plaques mark former literary homes. And in Glasnevin Cemetery rest

Christy Brown, Brendan Behan, Gerard Manley Hopkins, James Stevens and William

Rooney.

In 2010 Dublin was chosen as the UNESCO World City of Literature. It has a rich and

vibrant theatrical scene, superb literary museums, historic libraries, it hosts an annual

Book Festival, and offers literary guided walks. Pubs and bars keep alive the oral tradition

of reciting poems and songs or recounting stories. Dublin Booker Prize winners include

Anne Enright, John Banville, Iris Murdoch and Roddy Doyle and the city has an energetic

bookselling and publishing trade. Literature is in the very fabric of the city of Dublin.


LITERARY DUBLIN

* Richard Stanyhurst (1547-1618), historian and translator, was son of the Recorder of

Dublin. He contributed a history of Ireland during the reign of Henry VIII to Holinshed’s

Chronicles.

* Edmund Spenser (c1552-1599), poet, arrived in Dublin in 1580 as secretary to the Lord

Deputy, and he was made Clerk of the Irish Court of Chancery, a post he held for 6 years.

He started writing The Faerie Queene in Dublin.

* James Shirley (1596-1666), playwright, came to Dublin in 1636 when London theatres

were closed on account of the plague. He wrote plays such as St Patrick for Ireland for the

newly opened St Werburgh Theatre.

* Sir John Denham (1615-1669), playwright and poet, was born in Dublin when his father

was Chief Baron of the Exchequer in Ireland. He is chiefly remembered for his

topographical poem Cooper’s Hill (1642).

* Thomas Southerne (1660-1746), playwright, was born in Dublin and educated at Trinity

College. His best-known play is The Fatal Marriage (1694).

* Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), satirist, novelist and poet, is one of Dublin’s most famous

citizens. He was born in Hoey’s Court (now gone, though a plaque marks his birthplace)

and was educated at Trinity where he was a poor student and obtained his degree only by

“special grace”. He was ordained and was a clergyman in small livings in England and

Ireland before becoming, in 1713, Dean of St Patrick’s. He spent the remaining 32 years of

his life in Dublin. His last years there were very unhappy as he was suffering from

Meniere’s disease and thought he was going mad. Swift wrote pamphlets and essays on

Irish affairs, such as The Drapier’s Letters of 1724. His deanery is now part of a police

station in Bride Street.

* William Congreve (1670-1729), poet and playwright, was educated at Trinity College, but

had to leave when Trinity closed down for a time, due to James II’s persecution of the

protestants.

* Richard Steele (1672-1729), playwright and essayist, was born near St Patrick’s. He left

Dublin at the age of 13, but the effect of his upbringing was evident enough for Thackeray

later to describe him as “undoubtedly an Irishman”.

* George Farquhar (1677-1707), playwright, entered Trinity as a sizar (a student who did

menial jobs in return for his keep and studies) but left within 2 years. He wrote his famous

plays such as The Beaux’ Stratagem in London.


* Thomas Parnell (1679-1718), poet and scholar, was born in Dublin and educated at

Trinity.

* George Berkeley (1685-1753), philosopher, was educated at Trinity College. He took Holy

Orders, but was more interested in philosophical ideas and wrote A Treatise concerning

the Principles of Human Knowledge.

* Thomas Tickell (1686-1740), poet, first visited Dublin in 1710, under the patronage of

Addison. Tickell would later edit Addison’s works and write his finest poem On the Death

of Mr Addison. He was a friend of Jonathan Swift.

* Mrs Delaney (1700-1788), letter-writer and diarist, first visited Ireland in 1731, as a

young widow. She stayed at St Stephen’s Green, married a Dublin man and often

entertained Swift in her home.

* Henry Brooke (1703-1783), novelist, was educated at Trinity, and then worked in Dublin

as a lawyer. His strange novel The Fool of Quality was written in Dublin.

* Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774), poet, playwright and novelist, studied at Trinity as a sizar.

His tutor beat him and Goldsmith ran away, but later returned to take his degree. There is

a statue of him at Trinity.

Goldsmith spent much of his life in England, but his Irish childhood and the countryside of

his home were in his mind when he wrote the poem The Deserted Village.

* Edmund Burke (1729-1797), philosopher and liberal, was born in Dublin and educated at

Trinity. He espoused the emancipation of Irish trade, the Irish Parliament and the causes

of Irish Catholics.

* Edmond Malone (1741-1812), critic and Shakespearian scholar, was born in Dublin and

educated at Trinity. After studying law in London, he was

called to the Irish Bar, but gave that up and devoted himself to

literature.

* Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816), playwright, was the

Dublin-born son of actor Thomas Sheridan, who was also

Swift’s biographer. He attended Samuel Whyte’s Academy in

Grafton Street. When he followed his parents to London he

never returned to Dublin, but always cherished the memory of

the city.

* Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832), poet and novelist, visited

Dublin briefly in 1825 when he toured Ireland. He stayed at St

Stephen’s Green and was very touched by the warmth of his


welcome to Ireland. He paid homage to Swift, was almost mobbed at the theatre and was

cheered in the streets.

* Thomas Moore (1779-1852), poet and song-writer, was born in Dublin and attended the

same school as Sheridan, being one of the first Catholics to be admitted. He soon made a

name for himself as a singer and musician in Dublin society. His Irish Melodies made his

fame as Ireland’s national song-writer. A statue of him stands at College Green.

* George Croly (1780-1860), author and divine, was born in Dublin and educated at Trinity.

* Charles Maturin (1780-1824), writer of Gothic novels, was born in Dublin and educated

at Trinity and, for a time, kept a school in the city. He gained a reputation for eccentric

behaviour and bizarre dress. His novel Melmoth the Wanderer inspired Oscar Wilde to

take on the name of Sebastian Melmoth when he came out of prison and wandered round

Europe.

* Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859) visited Dublin and stayed in Sackville Street.

* Felicia Hemans (1793-1835), poet, came to Dublin to live with her brother in 1831. She

was a very popular poet in England and Ireland in her day. Today she is best remembered

for The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck.

* George Darley (1795-1846), poet, critic and mathematician, was born and educated in

Dublin but after an estrangement with his family, left for London.

* Samuel Lover (1797-1868), novelist and song-writer, was born in Grafton Street. His

novel Handy Andy is a burlesque of Irish life.

* James Mangan (1803-1849), poet, had a miserable childhood in Dublin being bullied by

his father. He was brilliant at school, worked at Trinity College Library to earn his keep,

translated from the Gaelic, wrote versions of Irish songs, but suffered from terrible

poverty. His early death was hastened by opium addiction.

* Charles James Lever (1806-1872), novelist, was born in Dublin and became a medical

student at Trinity. He wrote a novel a year, gaining great popularity for his breezy stories

of Irish squires and peasants and sporting life.

* Sir Samuel Ferguson (1810-1886), poet and antiquary, was educated

at Trinity and was called to the Dublin Bar in 1`838. He became Deputy

Keeper of the Records of Ireland.

* William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863), novelist, made a tour of

Ireland in 1842, which resulted in his Irish Sketch Book. His Irish

journey began with several days spent in Dublin, a city which

impressed him: “passing under the arch of the railway, we are in the


city itself. Hence you come upon several old-fashioned, well-built, airy, stately streets, and

through Fitzwilliam Square, a noble place, the garden of which is full of flowers and

foliage. The leaves are green, and not black as in similar places in London; the red brick

houses tall and handsome. Presently the car stops before an extremely big red house, in

that extremely large square, Stephen's Green, where Mr. O'Connell says there is one day

or other to be a Parliament. There is room enough for that, or for any other edifice which

fancy or patriotism may have a mind to erect, for part of one of the sides of the square is

not yet built, and you see the fields and the country beyond.”

* Sheridan Le Fanu (1814-1873), novelist and story-writer, was born at the Royal

Hibernian Military School where his father was chaplain, and educated at Trinity. He was a

master of the macabre and the supernatural, and wrote popular ballads. He is the writer

that Harriet Vane researches in Dorothy L. Sayer’s novel Gaudy Night.

* Thomas Davis (1814-1845) journalist and song-writer, had an Irish mother who brought

her 4 children to Dublin when her husband died. He studied at Trinity College and was

called to the Irish Bar. His volume of ballads was The Spirit of the Nation.

* Anthony Trollope (1815-1882), novelist, worked for the Irish Post Office for many years.

He met his future wife Rose in Dublin and after their marriage they settled there for some

years.

* Charlotte Bronte (1816-1855), novelist and poet, visited Dublin on her honeymoon in

1854. Her Irish husband, Arthur Bell Nicholls, enjoyed showing her around the city,

especially his old university Trinity College, but Charlotte had a bad cold and could not see

and do as much as she had hoped. She was pleasantly surprised by the “Englishness” (by

which she meant the ‘gentility’) of the inhabitants of the city.

* ‘Dion’ Boucicault (c1820-1890), playwright and novelist, was born in Dublin, but left at

an early age. Several of his plays, such as The Colleen Bawn, have Irish settings.

* William Lecky (1838-1903), historian, was educated at Trinity College where his statue

now stands. The last volumes of his History of England

concern the history of Ireland. He was MP for the university

and strongly pro-Irish in his sympathies.

* Alfred Graves (1846-1931), song-writer, was educated at

Trinity.

* Bram Stoker (1847-1912), novelist and creator of Dracula,

worked as a Civil servant in Dublin after being educated at

Trinity. He distinguished himself there by winning the

University Athletics Championship. He also worked as an

unpaid drama critic. He wrote children’s stories and other


novels, but it was the films and dramatisation of Dracula which made his book really

famous.

* George Moore (1852-1933), novelist, visited Dublin before settling there in 1901. He

stayed at the Shelbourne Hotel on St Stephen’s Green and it figures in his novel A Drama

in Muslin.

* Lady Gregory (1852-1932), playwright and patron of the arts, helped to found the Abbey

Theatre in Dublin. She wrote plays of her own, using Irish dialect, she translated Irish

sagas and wrote articles during the War of Independence. Her friendship with Yeats did

much to help him as a poet.

* Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), playwright, poet and novelist, grew

up in Merrion Square and was educated at Trinity. His mother

Jane held literary salons and was an ardent nationalist – she and

her son wanted to found a “Society for the Suppression of

Virtue”. His father William was an eminent eye and ear specialist.

Wilde made his name in England, after leaving Trinity, and tried

hard to lose his Irish accent as soon as he could, but he is

remembered as one of Dublin’s most famous sons. There is a

statue of him, looking very relaxed, in the north-west corner of

Merrion Square.

* George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), playwright, was born in Synge St where his house is

now a museum. He was baptized at St Bride’s (his sponsor was the local sexton because

the chosen sponsor arrived drunk and incapable). He was educated at St Stephen’s Green

for a while, and worked in an estate agency after leaving school. After moving to London,

Shaw made only occasional visits to Dublin, but he left money to various Irish institutions

in his will. He wrote plays about Ireland, such as John Bull’s Other Island and many of his

plays were performed at the Abbey Theatre.

* W.B.Yeats (1865-1939), poet, was born in Dublin, but had a rather interrupted education

there. He studied art at the National College of Art, before giving up art for poetry.

Yeats tended to idealise 18th century Dublin and what he considered its Anglo-Irish

intellectual tradition. However, he was greatly stirred by Irish politics and the Easter 1916

uprising inspired one of his greatest poems:

“All changed, changed utterly:

A terrible beauty is born.”

Yeats’ wife George bought a house in Merrion Square in 1922.


Yeats’ great legacy to the city of Dublin was the Abbey Theatre which he founded with

Lady Gregory, his friend and patron.

* George Russell (1867-1935), poet and journalist, was educated at Rathmines School and

the Metropolitan School of Art, where he met Yeats. His works are strongly nationalist

and mystical.

* J.M.Synge (1871-1909), playwright, had irregular schooling in Dublin due to delicate

health. He studied at Trinity. His play The Playboy of the Western World provoked rioting

at the Abbey Theatre. His last years were spent in Dublin.

* Oliver St John Gogarty (1878-1957), poet and memoirist, was born in Dublin and studied

medicine at Trinity. He became a fashionable Dublin surgeon. He was friendly with Yeats

and Joyce and figures as a character in Ulysses. He once donated two swans to the River

Liffey, after he had had to jump into it to save his own life.

* Patrick Pearse (1879-1916), poet and short-story writer, was born in Dublin and

educated at University College. He was active in the Gaelic League and established a

school for teaching Gaelic in Dublin. He was executed for his part in the Easter uprising of

1916.

* Sean O’Casey (1880-1964), playwright, was born and brought

up in Dublin. He describes his childhood in his autobiography I

Knock at the Door. He depicts the poverty and starvation in the

Dublin slums. He joined the Irish Republican Brotherhood and

his play Juno and the Paycock is based on his experience of the

city during the ‘Troubles’. His plays were attacked so fiercely

that he left Ireland for England.

* Padraic Colum (1881-1972), poet, playwright and biographer,

worked as a clerk for the Irish Railways in Dublin. He acted with

the Irish National Theatre Society and was one of the founders of the Abbey Theatre.

* James Joyce (1882-1941), novelist, lived at many different Dublin addresses and was

educated at University College. His writing life was spent mainly in Europe and his works

were not published until after he left Dublin, but his writing is indelibly linked to the city.

The Dubliners, a collection of short stories, depicts Dublin as a frustrating place where

hopes are thwarted and men and women feel trapped, reflecting Joyce’s own feelings

about the city. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is also strongly autobiographical.

Joyce’s most famous work Ulysses is probably the most conscientiously topographical

novel ever written. Joyce once boasted that if the city were destroyed, it could be rebuilt

in detail from his this book. The novel recreates, with almost fanatical care, the Dublin of

June 16, 1904, as Leopold Bloom wanders through the city on that day. This day is now

celebrated around the world as Bloomsday, and Dublin offers special tours that point out


all the places that appear in the book. The book was widely condemned as obscene and

banned in several countries. It was only published in Ireland in the 1960s, although it had

first been published in Paris in 1922.

The James Joyce Centre in North George Street offers a “Ulysses experience”.

* James Stephens (c1880-1950), poet and novelist, was born in a poor part of Dublin and

was self-educated. He helped to found the Irish Review in 1911 and worked as Registrar of

the National Gallery.

* Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973), novelist, was born in Dublin. She later wrote a Dublin

memoir, Seven Winters and also a history of the Dublin hotel “The Shelbourne”.

* Patrick Kavanagh (1904-1967), poet, left his home town of Inniskeen to become a

journalist in Dublin in 1931. His poetry is about the countryside which he loved. His best-

known epic is The Great Hunger which caused an outrage when it was published because

of its sexual content. In the 1950s and 60s Kavanagh lived again in Dublin and died in the

city, but was buried in Inniskeen. There is a simple memorial seat to him beside the Grand

Canal at Baggot Street Bridge and a life-size statue of him sitting on a bench on the other

side of the canal.

* Samuel Beckett (1906-1989), playwright, was born in Dublin and was educated at Trinity

College. He was a keen sportsman and became the first Nobel Prize winner to appear in

cricket’s Wisden. He lectured in French at Trinity for a time, but preferred to live in France.

Much of his writing was done in French and then translated into English. Beckett was a

radical experimenter, as shown in his play Waiting for Godot, but his plays have an elusive

Irish quality in their words and rhythms.

* Brendan Behan (1923-1964), playwright and novelist, was steeped in Irish history and

patriotism from an early age. His father had been imprisoned as a republican. Behan

joined the IRA in 1937, was arrested and sentenced to Borstal and depicts prison life in

The Quare Fellow and Borstal Boy. He wrote his plays in both Irish and English.

Behan’s drunken roisterings were reported in the papers and became

a Dublin legend. His favourite pubs are part of the Dublin Literary

pub tours.

* Edna O’Brien (1930 - ), novelist, qualified as a pharmacist in Dublin.

Her novel The Country Girls, the first book of her trilogy, depicts 2

innocent country girls escaping to sinful Dublin. Her novels were

banned because of their attack on Irish Puritanism. She has also

written a travel book, Mother Ireland and a biography of James Joyce.

It was reading Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man which made her realise she

wanted to spend her life with literature.


Several of O’Brien’s books have been banned in Ireland because they deal with sexual love.

* Maeve Binchy (1940- ), novelist, was born in Dublin and studied at University College.

She taught at a Dublin school and then moved into journalism. Many of her novels, such

as Circle of Friends are set in Dublin.

* Colm Toibin (1955- ). Novelist and playwright, had his first play Beauty in a Broken

Place performed at the Peacock Theatre, a small theatre within the Abbey building which

concentrates mainly on presenting new plays. Toibin is also the author of a biography of

Lady Gregory, one of the founders of the Abbey Theatre, which is called Lady Gregory’s

Toothbrush. The title comes from Lady Gregory’s comment that the riots caused by

Synge’s play The Playboy of the Western World in 1910 were fought between those who

used a toothbrush and those who did not.

* Roddy Doyle (1958- ), novelist, was born in Dublin and educated at University College.

He taught in Dublin and would depict the poor of the city in his novels. Paddy Clarke Ha

Ha Ha shows the violence a hard-drinking Dubliner inflicts on his family.


seeing some of the great cities of the world through the

Documents