Dublin
Two of the best-known Gothic novels in English were written by Dubliners. Oscar Wilde was born there and Bram Stoker grew up there, worked as a civil servant at Dublin Castle and only later moved to London to run a theatre.
Neither The Picture of Dorian Gray nor Dracula is set in Dublin, which makes the city an interesting case: a place that shaped two writers who then set their most famous books elsewhere. The National Library of Ireland holds the manuscript and periodical collections that document that literary world.
A library to check
- National Library of Ireland — catalogues and digital collections, open to readers online
Books connected to Dublin
- The Picture of Dorian Gray — Oscar Wilde, 1890. Aphorisms on one page and a genuinely disturbing moral structure on the next.
- Dracula — Bram Stoker, 1897. The founding vampire novel, and a surprisingly clever piece of documentary storytelling.
- Dubliners — James Joyce, 1914. The best short-story collection in English, and the cleanest way into Joyce.
- A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man — James Joyce, 1916. A portrait of an artist as a young egotist, written with extraordinary control of style.
- Ulysses — James Joyce, 1922. The novel that changed what fiction could do, and much funnier than its reputation.
- Gulliver's Travels — Jonathan Swift, 1726. The cruellest and most inventive satire in English, and still the best argument against complacency.
A note on accuracy
We describe literary connections and public collections, not street addresses, opening hours or ticket prices. Those change and we cannot verify them for every reader. Follow the institution's own site for current visiting information.