James Joyce Remembered, Edition 2022

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In time for the 100th anniversary of Ulysses comes a new edition of a classic remembrance of its author, penned by one of his lifelong friends and supporters.

C.P. Curran first met James Joyce in a University College Dublin lecture hall in 1899, and the two quickly struck up an intense lifelong friendship. Curran was a model for the character Gabriel in Joyce’s “The Dead” and was also one of the first people to reject a piece of Joyce’s writing—the 1904 poem “The Holy Office,” which Curran, as editor of St. Stephen’s, lightheartedly deemed “an unholy thing.” Curran even is mentioned by name in Ulysses, where Stephen Dedalus recalls that he owes him ten guineas. In 1968, Curran summed up his views of the seminal Modernist author in James Joyce Remembered. This year—the centennial anniversary of Ulysses’ publication—University College Dublin Press is pleased to bring forth a new edition of this classic remembrance, edited by Curran’s granddaughter and featuring sparkling new essays from a host of Joyce scholars, literary critics, architects, and historians.

This group of University College Dubliners takes a new look at Curran’s work, delving into the Curran-Laird collection at the James Joyce Library to offer a singular portrait of the author and his inventive cohort of friends. The world of Joyce and Curran opens up, revealing little-known writing and episodes in political activism, during the Irish wars that flared up again in 1922 as Ulysses first began circulating, and the struggles against fascism that came to engulf Joyce’s Paris. This highly illustrated tribute to a literary figurehead is perfect reading for Joyce neophytes, Bloomsday aficionados, and anyone interested in examining this watershed period of Irish history through an international lens.