Description
Book SynopsisIn 1968, Conn Curran summed up his life-long companionship with Joyce, including the 1904 photograph he took of his friend in his family's back garden. With this re-issue of Curran's book, another group of University College Dubliners takes a new look at his work, delving into the Curran-Laird collection at the James Joyce Library. Side by side with Joyce, Curran, arts critic, and Helen Laird Curran, his activist partner, come into clearer view; writer-critic adventurers Padraic and Mary Maguire Colum return again; savant Paul Leon, in Paris, takes his place too. The literary, cultural, and political context widens: the Irish wars, erupting again in 1922 as Ulysses begins circulating; the Paris-Dublin rescue operation of this group's papers at Joyce's death, suspended - and accomplished - in this time of violence. The 2022 collective edition offers an uncommon picture of this inventive and committed cohort, their work, and their worlds. With essays by Hugh Campbell, Diarmaid Ferriter, Anne Fogarty, Margaret Kelleher and Helen Solterer. The UCD Curran-Laird collection presented by Eugene Roche and Evelyn Flanagan. This is a full colour, highly illustrated book with special edition design features throughout.
Trade Review'His defiance of a media ban by the then invading Russians earned the attentions of a famous general, who considered shooting him but instead became a close friend.' - Terence Killeen, The Irish Times, June 2022.; 'The collaborative book reveals some new details of their lives in Dublin at a crucial time in Ireland’s fight for independence from Great Britain, and the Civil War that erupted in the year Joyce published Ulysses.' - Duke University, June 2022.; 'Curran’s book is not only an empathetic & nuanced account of Joyce but also, in effect, of a whole galaxy of UCD graduates who contributed to the Irish Revival & to the formation of the state' - UCD Today, Spring/Summer 2022.;
