Folio Archives 281: Dubliners by James Joyce. 2003
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1wcarter
Dubliners by James Joyce. 2003
Set in the first decade of the 20th. century, Dubliners is a collection of 15 essays describing people and places in the Irish capital. Joyce features priests, prostitutes, publicans and public servants. He describes drunkenness (a lot of drunks, it is Ireland after all!), lust, first love, illicit sex, domestic violence, gambling and death. It is the real Dublin of the time when Joyce lived amongst these characters, and no punches are pulled in the reality of the descriptions.
The essays vary in length from seven to twenty-five pages and are illustrated by eleven leaves contemporary photos by J.J.Clarke that do not actually correspond to the subject of each story, but give the flavour of the era. This claims to be a corrected text with explanatory note by Robert Scholes at the back of the book.
There book has 230 pages and is bound in brown cloth lettered on the cover in cream and gold. It has mottled brown endpapers and a wrap-around sepia photo on the 24.9x16.9cm. slipcase. The endpapers are plain brown.
Wrap-around montage of slipcase
An index of the other illustrated reviews in the "Folio Archives" series can be viewed here.
Set in the first decade of the 20th. century, Dubliners is a collection of 15 essays describing people and places in the Irish capital. Joyce features priests, prostitutes, publicans and public servants. He describes drunkenness (a lot of drunks, it is Ireland after all!), lust, first love, illicit sex, domestic violence, gambling and death. It is the real Dublin of the time when Joyce lived amongst these characters, and no punches are pulled in the reality of the descriptions.
The essays vary in length from seven to twenty-five pages and are illustrated by eleven leaves contemporary photos by J.J.Clarke that do not actually correspond to the subject of each story, but give the flavour of the era. This claims to be a corrected text with explanatory note by Robert Scholes at the back of the book.
There book has 230 pages and is bound in brown cloth lettered on the cover in cream and gold. It has mottled brown endpapers and a wrap-around sepia photo on the 24.9x16.9cm. slipcase. The endpapers are plain brown.
Wrap-around montage of slipcase
An index of the other illustrated reviews in the "Folio Archives" series can be viewed here.
2ian_curtin
A lovely edition of a favourite book, which I was able to find a pristine second-hand copy of in 2014. I feel that the overall design is very apt and complements and enriches Joyce's work.
The Ormond Printworks you can see on the cover image no longer exist, but just out of shot to the left would be the Ormond Hotel, in the bar of which Joyce set the Sirens episode in Ulysses. The hotel survived and was a going concern up to the 00s; at which point it was bought by a developer, demolished to make way for a larger hotel, became a victim of the credit crunch when funding evaporated, and is still lying derelict.
>1 wcarter: I would quibble with your description of the book as containing "essays" - they are short stories, fictions, albeit Joyce filled them with places, details and people he knew from life. Richard Ellmann, in his biography of Joyce, describes as an example how the protagonists of Two Gallants, Lenehan and Corley, were both based on people Joyce knew; in fact for Corley he didn’t even change the name. The real Corley, hearing he was “in a story” but obviously no way inclined to read it, was delighted by the fact.
As for drink and drinking in Irish life and literature: well, what can I say: they're only clichés because they're in some way true. Cheers!
The Ormond Printworks you can see on the cover image no longer exist, but just out of shot to the left would be the Ormond Hotel, in the bar of which Joyce set the Sirens episode in Ulysses. The hotel survived and was a going concern up to the 00s; at which point it was bought by a developer, demolished to make way for a larger hotel, became a victim of the credit crunch when funding evaporated, and is still lying derelict.
>1 wcarter: I would quibble with your description of the book as containing "essays" - they are short stories, fictions, albeit Joyce filled them with places, details and people he knew from life. Richard Ellmann, in his biography of Joyce, describes as an example how the protagonists of Two Gallants, Lenehan and Corley, were both based on people Joyce knew; in fact for Corley he didn’t even change the name. The real Corley, hearing he was “in a story” but obviously no way inclined to read it, was delighted by the fact.
As for drink and drinking in Irish life and literature: well, what can I say: they're only clichés because they're in some way true. Cheers!
3LBShoreBook
This looks fantastic. I have a heavily annotated edition that was clunky to read because I kept going to the endnotes. I might try this one and just go with the flow with occasional Google searches - the language is too good not to savor.
