One Dublin One Book 2025: Dublin, written in our hearts
One Dublin One Book aims to encourage everyone in Dublin to read a book connected with the capital city during the month of April every year. This annual project is a Dublin City Council initiative, led by Dublin City Libraries and Dublin UNESCO City of Literature, which encourages reading for pleasure.
Sé ceann de na cuimhní is láidre líon ó laethanta m’óige ná an cumhracht ó na leabhair scoile nua cheannaithe le linn mí Lúnasa nuair cheannaítear iad ón siopa bídeach i Sráid an Teampaill. Samhail iontais a bhí le teacht, na leathnaigh gan léamh, tíortha rúndiamhrachta gan rian choise ós comhair m’aghaidh amach. Bhraitheas an mothú céanna le déanaí nuair bhuaileadh an riar maith de leabhair úr Ghaeilge ar mo dheasc san leabharlann.
Dublin City Council will unveil a commemorative plaque for the writer Maeve Brennan at her childhood home (48 Cherryfield Avenue) in Ranelagh on 6 January 2024 at 11am.
Dubliners is Joyce at his most direct and his most accessible. Any reader may pick it up and enjoy these fifteen stories about the lives, loves, small triumphs and great failures of its ordinary citizens without the trepidation that might be felt on opening, say, Ulysses, famed for its impenetrability and stream-of-consciousness hyperbole. At the same time, although simply written, there is great depth and many levels to the stories, in which the characters – young, middle-aged and old – are revealed, to themselves, or sometimes only to the reader, in all their frail humanity.Access Dubliners | James Joyce in the library catalogue.Dubliners, The Stories:The Sisters - An Encounter - Araby - Eveline - After the Race - Two Gallants - The Boarding House - A Little Cloud - Counterparts - Clay - A Painful Case - Ivy Day in the Committee Room - A Mother - Grace - The Dead'[Dubliners is] filled with humour and love, pain and loss. Above all, it rings out with a love of these streets, of the voices of the people who inhabit them, their wit, their style, their optimism even as the world collapses around them.'John Boyne, award-winning author of the international bestseller, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas.James JoyceJames Joyce (1882–1941) is one of the most internationally known and influential Irish writers, whose books, particularly the landmark Ulysses (1921), have become the subject of worldwide scholarly study. His other works include the short story collection, Dubliners (1914), and the novels A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) and Finnegans Wake (1939). He also wrote two books of poetry and a play, Exiles.Dubliners was first submitted to a publisher in 1905, but because of disputes over the contents of some of the stories, it was not published until 1914. The final story, ‘The Dead’, was made into a film by John Huston in 1987.Right: James Joyce. Image of Joyce reproduced from the original glass negative held in UCD Library Special Collections by kind permission of Helen SoltererJoyce 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.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.Although he spent most of his adult life abroad, Joyce's writing is centred on Dublin. By way of explanation, he said: 'For myself, I always write about Dublin, because if I can get to the heart of Dublin I can get to the heart of all the cities of the world. In the particular is contained the universal.'This article first appeared on dublinonecityonebook.ie. 'Dubliners' was the Dublin: One City, One Book choice for 2012. Dublin: One City, One Book is an award-winning Dublin City Council initiative, led by Dublin City Public Libraries, which encourages everyone to read a book connected with the capital city during the month of April every year.
In this episode of the DCLA podcast, Michelle Read reads the first three stories featured in The Long Gaze Back. Michelle Read, is an actor and voice artist and an advocate of reading aloud for adults. She reads ‘The Purple Jar’ by Maria Edgeworth; ‘Frank's Resolve’ by Charlotte Riddell; ‘Poisson d'Avril’ by Somerville and Ross.
In this episode of the DCLA podcast, The Long Gaze Back authors Bernie McGill, Lia Mills and Éilís Ní Dhuibhne read from their work and talk with Sinéad Gleeson about the anthology, their work, and being a female author in Ireland today.Recorded at Blanchardstown Library on 12 April 2018, with thanks to Fingal Libraries.
This advertising sheet from the publishers Maunsel and Company, Abbey Street, Dublin, announces the imminent publication of James Joyce’s collection of short stories Dubliners. The collection was due for publication on 24 November 1910 at a cost of 3s.6d. It was due out in good company with illustrated books by Lady Gregory, Ella Young and Seosamh MacCathmhaoil, James Connolly’s Labour in Irish history, and Tom Kettle’s The day’s burden.Dubliners is a collection of fifteen short stories portraying the lives of mostly lower-middle-class Dublin characters. It focuses on themes of family, religion, and nationality, which are treated under the successive aspects of childhood, adolescence, maturity and public life. Joyce made clear that this was a deliberate scheme. From the very beginning he had Dubliners in mind as a title for the overall collection. Writing to the publisher Grant Richards, in October 1905, he stated; “I do not think that any writer has yet presented Dublin to the world.” Though the stories are saturated in the sights and sounds of early twentieth-century Dublin they have always carried a much wider resonance and have won the admiration of readers throughout the world.Joyce, using the pseudonym Stephen Daedalus, published early versions of ‘The Sisters’, ‘Eveline’ and ‘After The Race’ in The Irish Homestead between August and December 1904. After leaving Ireland in October 1904 he continued to write stories, first in Pola then in Trieste and, following several rejections, had a collection of twelve stories accepted by the English publisher Grant Richards in October 1905. When ‘Two Gallants’ was added in April 1906 the printers refused to set it on the grounds of possible obscenity. After a protracted period of negotiations, during which Joyce endeavoured to meet the objections to this and other stories by making a number of changes while strongly defending the integrity of his work, Richards eventually withdrew from the contract. A succession of publishers then rejected the work which had been augmented by the addition of ‘The Dead’, written in 1907 following an unhappy period working in a bank in Rome. In August 1909, while back in Dublin managing the short-lived Volta cinema, Joyce signed a contract with Maunsel & Company, the leading Irish publisher of the time. But difficulties arose when the firm’s managing director, George Roberts, took exception to references to real people and places in some of the stories. After a lengthy delay, from the announcement in 1910, the text was set in type by the summer of 1912 but, after more heated argument, during which both sides consulted legal opinion, Roberts refused to publish it. The printer, John Falconer, destroyed the entire print run with the exception of one copy which Joyce managed to rescue.Several publishers then rejected the work but, in January 1914, Grant Richards agreed to revive the original contract and Dubliners was published on 15 June 1914. Initially it sold poorly - a mere 379 copies in the first year - and early reviews were mixed. But gradually its reputation began to grow and it has remained in print ever since, being published all over the world in English language editions and in translation.
(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.
