Famous people

Said about the city: "I want to give a picture of Dublin so complete that if the city one day suddenly disappeared from the earth it could be reconstructed out of my book." (Joyce on his novel "Ulysses.")

Although not very prolific, Joyce is regarded as an important stream-of-consciousness novelist of the 20th century. Writers of the calibre of Samuel Beckett, Salman Rushdie, William Burrough, Mairtin O Cadhain and Thomas Pynchon, to name just a few, have been greatly influenced by Joyce's unique, innovative use of language in such masterworks as 700-page "Ulysses" (1922) and "Finneganns Wake" (1939). The latter is so extremely complex that few reades can follow its meaning. Joyce is also known for his short story series "Dubliners" (1914) providing readers with a glimpse of "our dear dirty Dublin", and an autobiographical novel "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" (1916). He only wrote one play, "Exiles" (1918). Joyce passed away in Zurich.

Said about the city: "No men in Dublin go to taverns who are worth sitting with."

The principal English language prose satirist and political pamphleteer, dean of St Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin (1713-1745), also known as a fruitful poet and essayist, Swift owes his fame to his timeless novel "Gulliver's Travels" (1726). It is still cherished by children around the world as an adventure story, while in fact Swift intended it to be an adult satire open to a variety of interpretations. His other familiar works include "The Battle of the Books" (1697), "A Take of a Tub: And Other Works" (1704), "Abolishing Christianity and Other Short Pieces" (1708), "The Drapier's Letters" (1724) and "A Modest Proposal" (1729). Swift is buried in St. Patrick's Cathedral.

Said about the city: "In my eyes dublin has always been a tramway. I used to have to ride the tram for one hour and a half every morning and night. And it was always raining."

Arthur Guinness was a superior Irish brewer. On top of that he proved to be a crafty businessman. He is famous as the founder of the empire bearing his name. What is not a common knowledge is that he was also a fine humanitarian. In 1759, after several years of brewing only a few pints of beer or ale a day, he became master of the Dublin Corporation of Brewers. 19 years later Guiness started producing porter - a style of rich beer made with roasted barley that gained its name from being drunk by porters. It is known as "Guinness's black Protestant Porter" after the owner's antagonism to the United Irishmen. Nowadays "Guinness" black beer is probably the most famous Irish product. No less than 10 million licensed glasses of foamy stout are produced daily in almost every part of the world.

Wilde is celebrated as a children's writer, novelist, playwright and story writer. He published two collections of fairy tales, "The Happy Prince and Other Stories" (1888) and "The Picture of Dorian Gray" (1890). His success as a playwright began in 1892 with "Lady Windermere's Fan" and he followed it with other comedies that earned him widespread acclaim such as "Vera, or The Nihilists" (1880), "The Duchess of Padua" (1883), "A Woman of No Importance" (1893), "And Ideal Husband" (1895) and "The Importance of Being Earnest" (1895). Wilde is also the author of prose works including "The Canterville Ghost" (1887), "Lord Arthur Seville's Crime and other Stories" (1891), "Intentions" (1891) and "De Profundis" (1905). His most famed poem, "The Ballad of Reading Gaol", was penned in 1898 after two years of Wilde's imprisonment for homosexuality.

Said about the city: "Dublin is a city full of humour, Dublin is a city full of wit. Dublin is a city full of buskers, playing old Waterboys hits." ("City Full of Ghosts")

Yeats's long and prosperous career was crowned in 1923 by the Nobel Prize "for his always inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation." Amongst his most famous lyrics are "Easter 1916", "The Second Coming" and "Sailing to Byzantium." Besides being a poet, he also composed 26 plays - the most notable among them are "The land of heart's desire" (1894), "The Shadowy Waters" (1900), "Cathleen ni Houlihan" (1902), "Deirdre" (1907), "At The Hawk's Well" (1916), "Calvary" (1921), "The Cat and the Moon" (1924) as well as the "The Words upon the Window-Pane" (1934). As a visionary artist, Yeats presented his rather ambiguous views in all his writings.

This Dublin-born painter explored the subjects of misery and loneliness. His paintings are abundant with unimaginably disfigured bodies and fantastically deformed faces. Of his many works the better known are: "Watercolour", "Portrait", "Abstraction", "Figure with Meat" and a magnum opus "Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion" (1944; Tate Gall., London). He was self-taught as an artist, but among his influences he Picasso, Velazques and van Gogh. Bacon's retrospective was shown in 1962 at the Tate Gallery in London, Also, the Guggenherim Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York organised the artist's major exhibitions in 1963 and 1975 respectively.

Said about the city: "A certain flippant utile derision and belittlement that confuses the noble and serious with the base and ludicrous seems to me peculiar to Dublin."

He was a man of many passions. A chief figure in the 20th century theatre, literary critic, socialist spokesman and one of the most popular public speakers of his time, Shaw is principally famous as the author of over 50 plays. Several of them, like "Major Barbara", indicated that socialism could help solve the dilemmas posed by capitalism. Shaw gained a wide renown in 1904 with the appearance of his play "John Bull's Other Island." His status as a dramatist continued to rise and plays such as "Heartbreak House", "Back to Methuselah", "The Apple Cart" and his masterwork "Saint Joan" were welcomed with high critical praise. He was looked upon as a "second Shakespeare." In 1925 he received the Nobel prize for literature. He accepted the award but rejected the money. Shaw's immortal play "Pygmalion" (1914) served as the basis for two movies of the same title and a musical, "My Fair Lady."