James Joyce once wondered whether he had been “unnecessarily harsh” in Dubliners about his native city. In particular, he felt he had not reproduced its unique “hospitality.” Dublin Tales does not always paint a brighter picture of the capital than its iconic forbearer. But it is home to a wide range of historical- and present-day perspectives on the place.
A rediscovered author (George Egerton, pseudonym of an important writer in the ‘New Woman’ movement of the 1890s) precedes canonical eminences (Joyce, Liam O’Flaherty, Elizabeth Bowen, James Stephens, Brendan Behan). Renowned figures of the later 20th century (Val Mulkerns, John McGahern, William Trevor) lead on to contemporary classics (Éilís Ní Dhuibhne, Mary O’Donnell). Four works have been specially commissioned for the edition, by Mirsad Ibišević, Kevin Power, Melatu Uche Okorie and Caitríona Lally. Two stories in Irish, by Dara Ó’Conaola and Caitlín Nic Íomhair, appear with English translations.
Dublin is often an object of aversion in other parts of the country, for swallowing resources in a highly-centralised state. Internally, it has been maltreated by planners and politicians, partly from indifference to its colonial architectural legacy. “Grand old mansions” degraded by the late nineteenth century into “filthy tenements” feature in the first story, which reflects the notoriety of the impoverished garrison town, as the site of the then-largest red-light district in Europe.
A chronological sequence marks key themes and events: the 1916 Rising, the opening street battles of the Civil War, precautionary measures during the ‘Emergency,’ the 1974 loyalist bombings, the northside-southside polarity, as well as a tense, eerie sense of what it must be like as a new arrival to rely on strangers for orientation in an unknown landscape. Most of all, the tales show protagonists surviving with (occasionally grim) humour alongside, and sometimes in spite of, the major fixtures of their city, whether these are well-known ‘characters,’ social divides, overweening monuments.
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Dublin Tales is part of the City Tales series from Oxford University Press, which combines scholarly quality with tourist appeal. The editors, Eve Patten and Paul Delaney, include guidebooks at the head of an informative and fascinating annotated bibliography, and navigate in a beautifully-written introduction an awareness of the kitschy use of fictional landmarks for attracting visitors, while producing a real map of Dublin as a literary metropolis.
