Brendan Lynch

One of the highlights of the June 2013 celebrations of James Joyce’s Bloomsday was the launch by Joyce biographer, Peter Costello, of Brendan Lynch’s latest book, “CITY OF WRITERS. The Lives and Homes of Dublin Authors.”

The book profiles no fewer than forty writers from Dean Swift and James Clarence Mangan to Brendan Behan and Maeve Binchy. It also includes lists of Suggested Walks and Recommended Reading of the authors’ works.

Liffey Press publisher David Givens said; “With 300 pages and 140 photographs, CITY OF WRITERS is one of our best productions. It owes a lot to Johnny Bambury’s stunning photographs, which illuminate the haunts of the book’s many writers.’

The launch in Dublin’s Alliance Francaise was attended by seventy guests, including Robert Nicholson, curator of the Writers Museum, and Guy St John Williams, grandson of novelist Oliver St John Gogarty.

Photo shows (left to right) Mrs Margie Lynch, Liffey Press publisher David Givens, Brendan Lynch and fellow-author, Peter Costello.

Foreword contributor Peter Costello wrote; ‘Since the days of Jonathan Swift, Dublin has been a city teeming with writers who are among the great names of literature: Sheridan le Fanu, Lady Morgan, Oscar Wilde, Yeats, Synge, Gogarty, James Joyce, Mary Lavin and Elizabeth Bowen. Brendan Lynch brings us on an inspirational tour of the lives and haunts of these writers.’

The new work was endorsed by award-winning author Colum McCann. Describing Dublin as the world’s greatest literary city, he insisted; ‘This book is a doorway into the stories of the past, and a key, then, into the future.’

Speaking earlier to the New Yorker of his own new novel, TransAtlantic, McCann also praised Brendan Lynch’s “Yesterday We Were in America” for its account of the pivotal 1919 transatlantic flight by Alcock and Brown.

Brendan Lynch (whose mother’s name was Moore) also revealed at the launch that he is a distant cousin of Ireland’s ‘National Bard’ Thomas Moore, who is profiled in the new book.

Paperback: 304 pages
Publisher: The Liffey Press (Jun 2013)
ISBN-10: 1908308451