In 1968, Conn Curran summed up his life-long companionship with Joyce, including the 1904 photograph he took of his friend in his family’s back garden.
With this re-issue if Curran’s book, another group of University College Dubliners takes a new look at his work, delving into the Curran-Laird collection at the James Joyce library.
Side by side with Joyce, Curran, arts critic, and Helen Laird Curran, his actvist partner, come into clearer view; writer-critic adventurers Paraic and Mary Maguire Colum return again; savant Paul Léon, in Paris, takes his place too.
The literary, cultural, and political context widens: the Irish wars, erupting again in 1922 as Ulysses begins circulating; the Paris-Dublin rescue operation of this group’s papers at Joyce’s death, suspended -and accomplished- in this time of violence.
The 2022 collective edition offers an uncommon picture of this inventive and committed cohort, their work, and their worlds.
