Author Biography
Vivien Igoe, a Dubliner, is author of James Joyce's Dublin and Nora Barnacle's Galway (1990), A Literary Guide to Dublin (1994), City of Dublin (1991), and Dublin Burial Grounds and Graveyards (2001). A former Curator of the James Joyce Museum, she was chair of the James Joyce Institute of Ireland from 1980-5 and was European Secretary of the James Joyce Foundation. She is a regular contributor to 'Sunday Miscellany' on RTE Radio 1 and has published articles in the James Joyce Quarterly, the Dublin James Joyce Journal, and the Joyce Studies Annual.
Description
It is well known that the pages of Joyce's Ulysses are filled with hundreds of intriguing and quirky characters. What is less well known is that many of these characters were based on real people who inhabited Joyce's Dublin and elsewhere. In The Real People of Joyce's Ulysses, Dubliner and Joycean scholar Vivien Igoe leaves no stone uncovered in revealing the biographies of scores of people that had previously been deemed to be fictional, and who had been accorded little attention as a result. Lavishly illustrated, the book provides a comprehensive A to Z of these real people with detailed information about where they lived, died and are buried; worked, intermingled and found inspiration. A number of characters appear under their own name and were celebrated Dublin personalities in different fields at the turn of the century, others were ordinary Dubliners. Numerous intriguing points of human interconnection also emerge, such as neighbours or street acquaintances of Joyce, or the many friends, enemies and contemporaries of his father.The newly discovered information in The Real People of Joyce's Ulysses amplifies how Joyce manipulated and drew on a very intimate knowledge of Dublin and its inhabitants.It reveals personalities and a social history which would otherwise have been forgotten and provides a fascinating insight into the Dublin of Joyce's time.
‘It will enrich beyond measure our understanding of the world that Joyce drew upon for his work’
John Wyse Jackson, James Joyce Broadsheet. Read the full piece here.
'Igoe uses an alphabetical method to go through not only the characters in the book but many people who are just mentioned. Her range is very wide...Igoe provides an unprecedented level of detail on all the multitudinous people she cites...if there is one thing this work does more than all others, it reminds us of the thoroughgoing imbrication of the fictional and the factual in Ulysses...the book is Dublin, and Dublin is the book'
Terrence Killeen, James Joyce Quarterly, 56.1-2 2018-2019
'In these days of massive over-production, not all books are essential. It can truly be said that this one is. Elegantly designed, it is up to the high standards of UCD Press. It will be welcomed as an important addition to Joycean scholarship by Irish writers. Moreover, it should find a place in any library devoted to the Irish Literary Revival and the history of modernism in Ireland, as well as to life and culture in Victorian and Edwardian Dublin. Vivien Igoe deserves the gratitude of the many readers and scholars who will be delighted by what she has done.'
Peter Costello, Studies, Spring 2018
‘...The Real People of Joyce's Ulysses is a remarkable work of scholarship that will undoubtedly prove a hugely important resource for Joyce scholars for years to come. This engaging work not only adds further texture to our understanding of Joyce's Ulysses but it can be read as a narrative in its own right, one which details the stories and peculiarities of Dubliners and the cultural figures that animated their world at a specific moment in history.'
Irish Literary Supplement, Fall 2017
You can read the full review here
‘In identifying the "real people" of Joyce's Ulysses, the author offers a rich, encyclopedic treatment of the hundreds of little-known figures who appear in the novel ... Igoe draws on an extensive array of primary sources and contemporary scholarship. ... Highly recommended.'
W. S. Brockman, CHOICE (Assoc. of College and Research Libraries), August 2017
You can read the full review here
‘The Real People of Joyce’s Ulysses is an important book in Joyce studies … The publisher should be congratulated for a well-designed book … [It] will stimulate in ways that are useful and delightful and will help us Joyceans to stand on solid ground under the characters that Joyce imagined in his grand mimesis. [It] is a new instrument with new possibilities for Joyce studies.’
Sidney Feshbach, James Joyce Literary Supplement, spring 2017
You can read the full review here
‘In The Real People of Joyce’s Ulysses, the Dubliner and Joyce scholar Vivien Igoe proves the case for Ulysses as a novel possessed by Dublin, rather than the novel that is the world’s possession. In the novel, Joyce foregrounds the inner lives of only a few characters. Around them, his shifting chorus of minor characters reflects the city’s streams of consciousness, while an outer layer of names and historical references holds the drama in space and time like the embankment of the Liffey River. Dr. Igoe lingers with every minor character and tracks down almost every allusion. The Real People of Joyce’s Ulysses is, for want of a better word, Joycean—joyous in its fondling of language and place, as rich and complex in flavor as the “feety savour of green cheese” in the Gorgonzola sandwich that Leopold Bloom eats at the bar of Davy Byrne’s pub.’
Dominic Green, New Criterion, May 2017
You can read the full review here
‘Vivien Igoe has been working away in Dublin since the early 1960s, collecting material for this essential book. It will enrich beyond measure our understanding of the world that Joyce drew upon for his work … There must be more than 600 biographical entries, with some 150 illustrations, many of them obscure and some never seen in print before.’
John Wyse Jackson, James Joyce Broadsheet, February 2017
You can read the full review here
‘Vivien Igoe has written a book that should be considered an essential reference work for anybody exploring Ulysses or Joyce’s Dublin. It should be on every Joycean’s bookshelf.’
Irish Studies Review, 2017
You can read the full review here
‘Vivien Igoe’s The Real People of Joyce’s Ulysses, published by UCD Press, more than provides the essential biographical information about the real characters which populate Joyce’s novel … Vivien’s book provides the reader who is floundering amid the welter of names with indispensable help … It will undoubtedly become an indispensable ‘vade mecum, for all Joyceans.’
The Gibraltar Chronicle, 14 October 2016
You can read the full review here
‘In The Real People of Joyce’s Ulysses, Vivien Igoe supplies the backgrounds not only of people – some 800 of them – but horses too.’
Times Literary Supplement, 22 July 2016
You can read the full review here
‘Vivien Igoe has done some extraordinary tracking down herself. And in this wonderful and impressive piece of scholarship, she has added hugely to what is one of our most timeless and ever-rewarding works of literature.’
Sunday Independent, 22 August 2016
You can read the full review here
‘Joyce’s many additions, subtractions, multiplications, and divisions are detailed in a wonderful new book by Vivien Igoe.’
Andrew O’Hagan, London Review of Books, July 2016
You can read the full review here
‘The presence of these “real people” in Ulysses, together with decades of diligent inquiry and research by Vivien Igoe, have together resulted in a unique reference resource for a vanished generation that would be the envy of any city. Keep a copy beside the bed. Who knows, you may find a long-lost ancestor!’
The Irish Catholic, 21 July 2016
You can read the full review here
‘This is a gazetteer to the real and incontestable world of Ulysses, the human tapestry which Joyce’s imagination embroidered, and then coloured and added texture. Igoe is a living link to that now-faded world … [This] volume could not be more lively or lavish. It’s large, but highly accessible … Bountiful illustration put faces to people caricaturised by Joyce … The book is essential for Joyceans, but anyone i
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