JAMES PLUNKETT’S HISTORICAL novel Strumpet City depicts a Dublin almost unrecognisable from the city today.
The book is set during the disruptive period around the 1913 Lockout when the city fought over basic rights for workers, and depicts tenements, a precarious uprising, and the grinding poverty in which so many of the city’s residents were forced to live.
The novel has been chosen for this year’s One City, One Book project, which encourages people to read a book connected to the capital city during the month of April every year (previous choices have included Dracula by Bram Stoker, At Swim Two Birds by Flann O’Brien and, appropriately, Dubliners by James Joyce).
As part of this, someone at Dublin City Public Libraries had the bright idea of taking quotes from the book and illustrating them using old photographs of Dublin from its massive digital archive. The photographs were taken over 50 years after the 1913 Lockout, and show landmarks, buildings, and people’s lives in the capital city, as mentioned in Strumpet City.
You can see the full collection of photographs on the Dublin City Public Libraries website, but here are just some of them. Can you name the lesser-known streets shown in the images? Let us know in the comments.
(All photographs courtesy of Dublin City Public Libraries)
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