Dublin City Libraries will be closed from Saturday 4 May to Monday 6 May 2024 (inclusive). Our online services will continue as usual. We will reopen on Tuesday, 7 May.
I feel at home in the 18th century. I’ve no desire to live here permanently, without 21st-century comforts and modern medicine, but to come as a visitor to a beloved destination. I am acquainted with many of Dublin’s citizens through their writings and through newspaper reports of their actions and concerns. I feel I know them well, I know their wives or husbands, and their children, and I know what they enjoyed to read, which gives me an insight into their minds and hearts. The layout of the city is also familiar to me and I can make my way around without getting lost, or feeling like an alien.Crossing the Liffey from the north side you come over Essex Bridge. Rebuilt in 1755, it’s now a good wide roadway, which allows two coaches to pass safely and ample footpaths that allow street traders to sell their wares. They have got rid of the equestrian statue of George 1 in the centre of the bridge as it was causing an obstruction in the river. (View the Rocque Map in our online catalogue)Click thumbnails to view larger images.I love to stand on the bridge and watch the ships tied up at the Custom House unloading their cargoes. The crane is working steadily lifting the heavy loads. Tea, spices, wine, sugar, paper and books are all unloaded here and sent off around the city in trundling carts. The city’s merchants bustle around all day looking important with clipboards and anxious frowns. Their new Royal Exchange building, just opened last year, is looking very fine at the top of Parliament Street. I believe there is a new coffee room running the length of the north front of the building upstairs where they can carry on business in comfort. I still like the old exchange in Crampton Court and I know lots of the merchants say that the new building is an expense that they cannot afford, although we all know that most of the money was raised through lottery schemes. (See Views of Dublin from 1780).Parliament Street is our newest street, forged through the old tangle of lanes and streets on the recommendation of the Wide Streets Commissioners. The street is wide and airy, its proportions taken from width of Essex Bridge. Its purpose was to give a grand view of Dublin Castle from the river, but now the view focuses on the classical façade of the Exchange.Into Skinner Row you can stop for coffee and a look at the day’s newspapers in Dick’s Coffee House. Upstairs to the drawing room, or first floor, of Carbery House, with its lovely wainscoting and large windows letting in plenty of light, you can sit by the fire, sip your coffee, glance at the papers, and listen to the conversations all around you. I have heard that this fine old timber-framed building is due for demolition. What a loss that will be!
The Irish Texts Society was founded in London in 1898. The initiative to establish the Irish Texts Society came from another Irish organisation based in London, the Irish Literary Society (ILS), founded in 1892. According to the 1895-6 annual report of the ILS “preliminary steps have been taken to form an Irish Texts Society for the publication of modern Irish works”. As a result a provisional sub-committee was appointed to investigate the project.
Yesterday saw the shortlist announcement for the 2012 Orange Prize for Fiction, the UK's annual book award for fiction written by a woman. In its 17th year, the Prize 'celebrates excellence, originality and accessibility in women's writing throughout the world' (quote).Included on the shortlist is 'The Forgotten Waltz', the story of an adulterous affair and the fifth novel by Irish writer Anne Enright. Enright, who has been nominated three times for the Orange award, won the Man Booker Prize in 2007 for her novel 'The Gathering'.Other books on the shortlist include 'Half Blood Blues' by Canadian writer Esi Edugyan, 'Painter of Silence' by Britain's Georgina Harding, and three works by American authors - 'The Song of Achilles' by Madeline Miller, 'Foreign Bodies' by Cynthia Ozick and 'State of Wonder' by Ann Patchett.The award ceremony takes place in London on the 30th May.You can read the full shortlist announcement on the award website.Reviews of The Forgotten Waltz"The Forgotten Waltz, teeming with credible characters that are difficult to empathise with, forces us to look in the mirror. It reveals human beings as capable of empathy, but not empathetic; capable of self-awareness, but constantly fleeing from it. It is a discomfiting public examination of conscience, an exposé of our national shortcomings so recently in the limelight." Irish Independent, April 2012."Cloaked in a novel about a love affair is a ferocious indictment of the self-involved material girls our era has produced." New York Times, Sept 2011."Less important than the momentum of the affair is Enright's playful and beautifully expressed examination of how it feels to cross the line." The Independent, March 2012."Enright has established herself as one of the most grown-up of contemporary novelists, one of the few to pay attention to the messiness of ordinary lives... Anne Enright has taken a great risk in writing this book, but she has brought it off superbly." The Telegraph, April 2011.
101 things you thought you knew about the Titanic.
The book "101 things you thought you knew about the Titanic.... but didn't" is a fascinating study of some of the myths and half-truths that have arisen since that fateful morning of April 15th 1912. (Growing up in Cobh, I reckon I've heard 99 of them!) Author Tim Matlin dispels many of these popular legends using primary sources such as the US Inquiry and the British Inquiry, both of 1912. He also shows that many of these stories are indeed true. The myths are neatly separated into categories such as: The Ship, Omens, Passengers, Collision, S.O.S etc.Below are a few examples to whet your appetite:Titanic was genuinely believed to be unsinkable. This is true as she was designed to stay afloat with any of her two watertight compartments flooded. The glancing blow Titanic received from the iceberg was not foreseen, as it had never happened before according to maritime records.Titanic was filled to capacity on her maiden voyage. False; she was about half full carrying 1,308 passengers out of a total capacity of 2,603.If Titanic had struck the iceberg head-on, she would not have sunk. This is true according to evidence given by Edward Wilding, one of Titanic's designers. He cited the case of the Arizona, which 34 years previously hit an iceberg head-on and survived. Titanic's bows would have been crushed in for 80 or 100 feet but she would have remained afloat according to Wilding. Titanic broke in half as she sank. Yes. This was not discovered until 1985 when her wreck was found on the seabed. Her bow section lay 650 metres North of her stern section.More women were saved from the Titanic than men. False. 338 men were saved and 316 women. This is because only about 25% of the people (passengers and crew) were women.You can find more books on the Titanic in our catalogue.
Travellers: Images of Labre Park, Ballyfermot, 1968 and 1969
Labre Park was the first site built specifically for Travellers by a Local Authority in Ireland. It was opened in September 1967 at a cost of £50,000 and consisted of 39 concrete 'tigíns' in a row off Kylemore Road. Each 'tigín' was composed of a living room with a stove, a lavatory, and a place to wash. Residents of Labre Park slept in their caravans which were parked beside or behind each 'tigín'. Rents at Labre Park ranged from ten to thirty shillings per week.
James Joyce's Dubliners (1914) presents a raw and uncompromising portrait of his native city in a book he described as 'my nicely polished looking glass'.These images from the Dublin City Council Photographic Collection show Dublin as it was over fifty years later. They illustrate how the city had changed and yet, in some respects, stayed the same.
Dublin is a city of churches, chapels, and meeting houses. This image gallery depicts some of them. Some remain, some have changed use, and some have vanished but all live on in our collective memory.
Dublin in the late 18th century was a consumer paradise. A building boom had resulted in fine streets and squares of classical houses. Interior design flourished with ornate plasterwork ceilings, painted wallpaper, beautiful furniture of polished wood and gilt, paintings and sculptures, print collections, and libraries filled with books in exquisite bindings.
'Sir John T. Gilbert (1829-1898): Life, Works and Context' by Brendan Twomey.Brendan Twomey spoke about John T. Gilbert at the 15th Annual Sir John T Gilbert commemorative lecture at Dublin City Library and Archive on 23 January 2012.
(Reproduced with the permission of Dublin: One City One Book.)Today, Thursday, 2nd February, is the 130th anniversary of the birth of James Joyce!Arguably Ireland’s greatest literary genius and a leading proponent of modernism in fiction, James Joyce was born at 41 Brighton Square to John Stanislaus Joyce and Mary Jane Murray, and spent his earliest years there and in Castlewood Avenue. He was educated at Clongowes Wood College and at Belvedere College before going on to University College Dublin (on St Stephen’s Green), where he studied modern languages.Right: James Joyce. Image of Joyce reproduced from the original glass negative held in UCD Library Special Collections by kind permission of Helen Solterer. (click image to enlarge)Joyce left Ireland with Nora Barnacle in 1904, and was to spend the rest of his life in Italy and France, paying his last visit to Ireland in 1912. Joyce died in Zurich on the 13th January, 1941, and is buried in Zurich's Fluntern Cemetery.Joyce's collection of short stories, Dubliners, and the choice for Dublin: One City, One Book 2012, was first published in 1914 by Grant Richards Ltd., London.