Dublin is famous as a city of writers and literature, and the Dublin Writers Museum is an essential visit for anyone who wants to discover, explore, or simply enjoy Dublin's immense literary heritage.

At the Writers Museum, Dublin’s literary celebrities from the past three hundred years are brought to life through their books, letters, portraits and personal items.

Whatever you think you know about Irish literature, you’re sure to find something to astound and delight you at the Dublin Writers Museum. Did you know, for example, that Oscar Wilde was a promising pugilist during his days at Trinity College, and that Samuel Beckett, had he not turned out to be one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century, would also have made a name for himself in the TCD cricket first eleven ?

The building, a restored Georgian mansion on Parnell Square, is a treasure in itself. The sumptuous plasterwork in the first floor Gallery of Writers is worth a visit alone.

Temporary exhibitions and lunchtime theatre, a specialist bookshop, and a café make this compact and informative Museum all the more appealing to anyone interested in discovering more about Dublin’s immense literary heritage.

DUBLIN WRITERS MUSEUM CELEBRATES 20th ANNIVERSARY WITH SPECIAL BIRTHDAY PRESENTATION

Minister Deenihan unveils Bronze Portrait Busts of John B. Keane and Frank McCourt

The Dublin Writers Museum, Wednesday 14th December 2011, celebrated its 20th anniversary with the unveiling of two bronze portrait busts of the writers John B. Keane and Frank McCourt.

The busts were presented as gifts to the Dublin Writers Museum by the sculptor, Séamus Connolly in conjunction with the Doorway Gallery.

The busts were officially unveiled by Minister of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, Jimmy Deenihan, T.D. at a reception held in the Museum’s Gallery of Writers.

Speaking at the Museum Minister Deenihan said “Building on the designation as a UNESCO City of Literature as was bestowed on Dublin in July 2010, honoring two of our most distinguished writers is most appropriate.  John B was my neighbour, mentor and friend. He was a wonderful observer of human nature in all of its vagaries.   Frank McCourt equally was a master of descriptive writing and without a doubt, reading his work makes us all feel as though we too were sharing similar experiences.”

Speaking at the event, Robert Nicholson, curator of the Dublin Writers Museum since its inception in 1991 said: “By far the most interesting, exciting and unusual contributions to the Dublin Writers Museum collection have been due to the generosity of donors. It is therefore with great pleasure that we accept these gifts today from Séamus Connolly. When this museum was founded, John B. Keane’s career was still flourishing, and Frank McCourt had yet to become a household name. Now sadly both have passed on. We welcome this opportunity to acknowledge, through the presence of these portraits, their great contribution to Irish literature.” 

The busts will be on permanent display in the Gallery of Writers at the Dublin Writer’s Museum. Other portrait busts on display in the Gallery include: Christy Brown, Monk Gibbon, Brendan Behan, Katharine Tynan, Jonathan Swift and James Joyce.  The gallery walls are flanked with portraits of Douglas Hyde, Thomas Moore, George Russell, WB Yeats, Mary Tighe and many more.

Dublin Pass Holders

You can visit the Writers Museum, Shaw Birthplace, James Joyce Museum, all for one great low price!

Find out more at www.dublinpass.ie

The Dublin Writers Museum presents Neil O’Shea in The Writers Entertain.
Extra show date now scheduled for the 30th March!

‘The Writers Entertain’ is an entertaining one-man performance showcasing some of Ireland’s most famous writers  including G B Shaw, Oscar Wilde, Jonathan Swift, Seamus Heaney and many others.   

The show is performed with minimal sets and props so that attention is focused almost entirely upon the actor and his ability to capture and retain your attention through the primary medium of language. 

Duration:  50 minutes

Extra show date now scheduled for the 17th May!

Performance will commence at 3.00 pm in the Gallery of Writers.

Duration:  50 minutes

Admission Price:  €11/13 per person

Price includes admission to the museum & performance

Booking is advance is recommended.

Exhibition:       James Joyce’s Dubliners, a Visual Response & Contemporary Contextualization

Artist:             Des Kilfeather

Location:         Dublin Writers Museum

Date:            Monday 19 March 2012, Close Saturday 19 May 2012

Des Kilfeather’s continuing philosophical exploration of ethics, power and apathy has taken him on a collaborative journey with James Joyce and his Dubliners texts. Each of the 15 stories inspired deep contemplation on the superficial narrative, how this relates to Joyce’s sophisticated and complex use of metaphor and what might have been his actual intention. Drawing from personal experiences of his Belfast Catholic childhood and adult life, Kilfeather has made a series of 16 watercolors that interrogate the perpetual cultural relevance of Dubliners and offer a fresh metaphorical interpretation. As a second act within this process, Kilfeather revisited his interpretation of the early twentieth century Dubliners philosophy of Joyce, applying a contemporary contextualization. Kilfeather then scanned his watercolors, added photography and digitally handwritten text to make further montage works that bring his interpretation into a late twentieth and early twenty first century cultural context. This exhibition comprises hung prints, montage and Des Kilfeather’s artist’s book James Joyce Dubliners – A Visual Response, in an Edition of 15.

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Wonderland Productions Ltd
In association with Dublin One City One Book and the Dublin Writers Museum presents...

James Joyce's Dubliners
31 March - 6 May 2012

In 1914 the epiphany that awoke the world’s imagination to the battered yet tumultuous city of Dublin, her streets, and her people, was a modest book of short stories that would become a defining Irish classic, James Joyce’s Dubliners...

Wonderland Productions’ Dubliners is a self-guided audio-walk, that brings you on a tour of the streets and historic buildings in which Joyce set his classic stories, whilst his tales are told and performed for you, in their original locations, by a large ensemble cast led by the celebrated Joycean actor Barry Mc Govern.

Dubliners – A Full Day’s Epic, guides the Joycean enthusiast across the city, from Chapelizod to Ringsend, via Fairview and the streets of Joyce’s adolescence. Dubliners – A Half Day’s Adventure, focuses on

the seven tales which occur inside the city centre. Both audio-walks include the unique chance to hear The Dead, inside the historic House of the Dead, ‘the dark gaunt house on Usher’s Island’ where Joyce’s aunts lived, a story which later concludes inside the Conroy’s bedroom at The Gresham Hotel. 

Dubliners is a key event at this April’s Dublin One City One Book Festival.  It is Wonderland’s second collaboration with Dublin One City One Book, following 2010’s hit dinner theatre production of The Picture of Dorian Gray, which will parallel with Dubliners, when it is back by popular demand in Bewleys of Grafton Street this April

10th-28th 2012.

FIVE STARS “Quite simply superb! Witty, wonderful, Wonderland… the most promising company since the debut years of Rough Magic... Without any risk of overstatement, Wonderland Productions is a company that is

really going places” The Irish Times

Dubliners - A Half Day's Adventure

Mon – Sat: Audio-walks start at Dublin Writers Museum from 10.30-11.30

Sun & Bank Hols: Audio-walks start at Dublin Writers Museum at 11.00-11.30

Full audio walk takes approximately 3-4 hours to complete on foot

The House of the Dead is open on Weekends and Wednesdays 12-3

Tickets €12/10 concession

Dubliners - A Full Day's Epic

Mon – Sat: Audio-walks start at Dublin Writers Museum at 10.00 sharp

Sun & Bank Hols: Audio-walks start at Dublin Writers Museum at 11.00 sharp

Tickets €19/15 concession

Half-Price on all tickets from Sat March 31st-Tues April 3rd!

Mondays - All tickets at concession rates!

Book your Tickets

Online www.entertainment.ie

Dubliners A Half Day’s Adventure  http://e1.ie/2lp

Dubliners A Full Day’s Epic http://e1.ie/2mn

Ticket Bookings: In person on the day in the Bookshop at the Dublin Writer’s Museum, 18, Parnell Sq Nth, D1.

Cast: Barry Mc Govern, Billie Traynor, Damien Devaney, Connolly Heron,Cormac McDonagh, David Ferguson, Jim Roche, Sarah O'Toole, Stephen Jones , Daithí Mac Suibhne, Steve Wilson, Caroline O'Boyle, Dave

Fleming, Shona Weymes, Lizzy Morrissey, Susan Davey, Amy Therese

Flood, Nora Keneghan, Sarah Bradley, Ruaidhrí  Ó Murchadha, Aela O'Flynn.

Director and Adaptor: Alice Coghlan Sound Design: Alma Kelliher and Tommy Foster. Photography: Eugene Langan

www.wonderlandtheatre.com

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Performance:            A Little Cloud from James Joyce’s Dubliners

By:                              BALLOONATICS THEATRE COMPANY/PAUL O’HANRAHAN                   

Location:                   Dublin Writers Museum

Date:                          Friday, April 6th, 2012 at 1:10 pm

There was no doubt about it: if you wanted to succeed you had to go away. You could do nothing in Dublin.

Contentious sentiments, perhaps, but Little Chandler’s frustrations are ones which once again have come to the fore in recent times. Paul O’Hanrahan’s reading of the Dubliners story, ‘A Little Cloud’, brings out the humor and the detail of Joyce’s account of the city and the tensions between the need to take responsibility and the desire for self-realization. At a time when emigration has once again become a feature of Irish life, this story of an encounter between a Dubliner and a returned emigrant has taken on a new relevance. Little Chandler’s meeting with the much-traveled journalist Ignatius Gallagher re-awakens his aspirations to moving abroad and escaping from the responsibilities of his Dublin home. In this story, Joyce can be seen to be exploring similar motivations to those that drove the author himself to leave his native city in 1904. 

Approximate duration of performance: 50 mins.

Admission fee applies:  €11/€13 Combined Museum & Performance Ticket; €8/€6 for Performance only

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BALLOONATICS THEATRE COMPANY

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Exhibition: An Exhibition showcasing a 1st edition of James Joyce’s Dubliners

Location:                   The Gallery of Writers, Dublin Writers Museum

Date:                          April 2012

During April, a 1914 first edition of Dubliners, kindly lent by the James Joyce Cultural Centre from their library, will be on display in the museum, with some supporting material to illustrate its history and publication. Dubliners  was originally due to be published in Dublin by Maunsel and Company and should have celebrated its centenary this year, but the publishers raised objections to the book, and after a final showdown with Joyce in 1912 the entire edition was destroyed without being issued. Joyce never returned to Dublin after this episode, and the book was published by Grant Richards in London two years later.  Regular admission fees apply.

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Dracula by Bram Stoker

Performance by Paul O’Hanrahan of the Balloonatics Theatre Compnay

Friday, April 20th, 2012 at 1:10 pm

A dramatised reading in costume of excerpts from Bram Stoker’s vampire horror story, Dracula. Based closely on Irish author Stoker’s original text, this solo piece is devised and performed by experienced performer Paul O’Hanrahan. Included are scenes of sensational drama such as Dracula’s encounters at his Transylvanian castle with Jonathan Harker and vampiric assaults in England on Lucy Westenra and Mina Harker. Gothic horror prevails: the climax, based on the pursuit and hunting down of Dracula, involves the destruction by Dr Van Helsing of the graves of the undead. 

Paul O’Hanrahan has presented Dracula in a number of different formats over the last twenty years including as a new play at the 1991 Dublin Theatre Festival, prior to a Swiss and German tour. He has also performed as the Count in a range of different locations including a castle, a whiskey store and at the Dublin Writers Museum to celebrate centenary of the publication of Dracula in 1997.

Approximate duration of performance:  60 mins

Admission fee: €8/ €6  Performance Only OR Combined Museum / Show €13/€11

Opening Times