tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35487484448917303192024-03-14T06:27:08.166+00:00building19thcenturyirelandBuilding 19th Century Irelandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01845699148405149486noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3548748444891730319.post-83524866191347987842012-02-07T08:00:00.000+00:002012-02-07T20:27:28.724+00:00If you do one thing today: enjoy Dickens 200!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Choices abound: I'll be listening in to Michael Eaton’s radio dramas that
recreate the life of Charles Dickens who was born on February 7, 1812. They started this week on BBC Radio 4 and
if you missed the first play,<span style="color: black;"> ‘A-Not-Overly-Particularly-Taken-Care-of-Boy’,</span> which was broadcast yesterday, you can <a data-mce-href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01bldps " href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01bldps" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">tune in here</span> </a>(the remaining programmes will be available as podcasts). Eaton’s five short biographical broadcasts, called <i>Dickens in London</i>,
are collaborative productions with artist and film-maker Chris Newby
and use a multimedia format including words, film and puppets.<br />
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If you are in Dublin and at a loose end over the next few evenings,
you could enjoy an evening of time-travel and go back to August 1858,
when Dickens visited the city to give public readings as part of a <a data-mce-href="http://blog.discoverireland.com/2011/12/charles-dickens-in-ireland/ " href="http://blog.discoverireland.com/2011/12/charles-dickens-in-ireland/%20" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">countrywide tour</span></a> that also took in Belfast and Cork. <a data-mce-href="http://www.dublincityofliterature.ie/newsmedia.html?d6f9900c6abf5559408ec51f5523a7ea=6aa3ea371c646199ca3f60f97030eac9" href="http://www.dublincityofliterature.ie/newsmedia.html?d6f9900c6abf5559408ec51f5523a7ea=6aa3ea371c646199ca3f60f97030eac9" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;"><i>Dickens in Dublin </i>(on tonight at Rathmines Library with actor Laurence Foster) </span> </a>recreates
the atmosphere of the Dublin readings to packed
houses in the Rotundo’s Round Room - seen above (it is now the Ambassador Theatre) at the
head of Sack-ville Street (now O’Connell Street). Prime seats cost five shillings for a numbered and reserved seat in the
stalls — about <a data-mce-href="http://www.measuringworth.com/ukcompare/ " href="http://www.measuringworth.com/ukcompare/%20" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">€22 in today’s money</span></a> (no mention of any booking charges in the <i>Freeman’s Journal </i>ad!) or a mere shilling for an unreserved seat at the back of the auditorium.<br />
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On his way from Morrison’s Hotel at the corner of Dawson and Nassau Street, where one <a data-mce-href="http://movies.nytimes.com/2011/12/21/movies/albert-nobbs-movie-review.html" href="http://movies.nytimes.com/2011/12/21/movies/albert-nobbs-movie-review.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">Albert Nobbs</span> </a>subsequently
worked, Dickens would have passed the photography studio of Simonton
and Millard at 39 Lower Sack-ville Street adjoining Jury’s Prince of
Wales Hotel - pictured above. It was later known as the Metropole Hotel and a Penneys clothes
store now stands on the site. A notice in the <i>Freeman’s Journal </i>of August 28<i> </i>proudly
announced that the studio was displaying<br />
<br />
<div style="background-color: white; text-align: center;">
‘Splendid Photographic
Portraits of the eminent author, </div>
<div style="background-color: white; text-align: center;">
standing out in life-like reality, as
he appears nightly at the Rotundo’. </div>
<br />
Especially useful for the many who
had failed to get a ticket for the reading was the option of subscribing
to a draw for a limited edition of these prints: a steal at just half
the price of a ticket to the reading ....they could then perhaps read
aloud from Dickens’ prolific output while in the presence, as it were,
of the man himself. The Metropole was remodelled in two phases by Dublin architect, <a data-mce-href="http://www.dia.ie/works/view/37394/building/CO.+DUBLIN%2C+DUBLIN%2C+O%27CONNELL+STREET+LOWER%2C+NO.+035-39+%28HOTEL+METROPOLE%29" href="http://www.dia.ie/works/view/37394/building/CO.+DUBLIN%2C+DUBLIN%2C+O%27CONNELL+STREET+LOWER%2C+NO.+035-39+%28HOTEL+METROPOLE%29" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">William Mansfield</span></a>:
once during 1891-93 and again from 1916-18 when it was rebuilt exactly
as it was prior to its destruction during the Easter Rising. The cinema, which
opened in 1922, and the ballroom, were great favourites with Dubliners down
through the years. You can read about some of those memories in the <span data-mce-style="color: #0000ff;" style="color: blue;"><a data-mce-href="http://bridge-it.tchpc.tcd.ie/items/show/210 " href="http://bridge-it.tchpc.tcd.ie/items/show/210%20" target="_blank"><span data-mce-style="color: #0000ff;" style="color: blue;"><i>Lifescapes:Mapping Dublin Lives</i></span></a></span> project,
an interactive, multimedia online digital resource from the Bridge-IT
Project at Trinity College. But back to the nineteenth century.....<br />
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Jury’s Prince of Wales Hotel was later renamed the Imperial Hotel and it
was owned by....yes - Mr. H. Jury! A successful businessman, he also
owned the Shelbourne Hotel on St. Stephen’s Green and two of the other
hotels in which Dickens stayed while in Ireland: the Imperial Hotels in
Belfast and Cork. Business boomed in the travel sector in nineteenth
century Ireland and Jury continually upgraded his premises: in 1868 the <a data-mce-href="http://www.dia.ie/works/view/42890/building/CO.+ANTRIM%2C+BELFAST%2C+DONEGALL+PLACE%2C+IMPERIAL+HOTEL" href="http://www.dia.ie/works/view/42890/building/CO.+ANTRIM%2C+BELFAST%2C+DONEGALL+PLACE%2C+IMPERIAL+HOTEL" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">Imperial in Belfast</span></a> (below) was extended by two storeys containing 24 bedrooms at a cost of £2,000, equivalent to <span data-mce-style="color: #0000ff;" style="color: blue;"><span data-mce-style="color: #000000;" style="color: black;">whopping €2.25m</span></span> today.<br />
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Dickens was very pleased with the reception he received when visting Ireland. The <i>Belfast Newsletter </i>review
of his appearance noted his remarks that ‘he had never the pleasure of
addressing any audience more competent to appreciate the points of his
narrative’ in the texts he read there which included some of the ones he
read in Dublin: <i>Boots at the Hollytree Inn, Mrs Gamp </i>and <i>The Poor Traveller. </i>The latter was published in Dickens’s weekly magazine <i>Household Words </i>on
December 25, 1854. You can read this and lots of other wonderful tales
and stories by Dickens and others such as Wilkie Collins, by browsing
the <a data-mce-href="http://www.djo.org.uk/" href="http://www.djo.org.uk/" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">Dickens Journals Online website</span></a>.
This digital humanities project used crowdsourcing to recruit volunteer
online text editors to assiste the project team and kept us informed of
their progress on Twitter and Facebook (see my previous post <a data-mce-href="http://building19thcenturyireland.wordpress.com/2011/10/02/please-sir-i-want-some-more/" href="http://building19thcenturyireland.wordpress.com/2011/10/02/please-sir-i-want-some-more/" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">'Please Sir, I want some more'</span></a>)<br />
<br />
As of today the <a data-mce-href="http://www.djo.org.uk/#djo-social" href="http://www.djo.org.uk/#djo-social" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">@Dickens_DJO</span></a> team have reached their goal of creating a complete online edition of both <i>Household Words </i>and its successor <i>All Year Round</i> in time for today’s anniversary – well done to all!<br />
<br />
© Caroline McGee, 7 February 2012<br />
<br />
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Imperial Hotel, South Mall, Cork. Courtesy of National Library of Ireland, Lawrence Collection<br />
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Venue for Dickens's reading in Cork: The Athenaeum. Courtesy of the National Library of Ireland Lawrence Collection<br />
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Morrison's Hotel, at the corner of Dawson and Nassau Streets, later became the offices of the North British Assurance Company, one of the many insurance companies that set up in Dublin during the nineteenth century. It is now a coffee shop.<br />
<br />
<b>Acknowledgements and further information:</b><br />
<br />
The lead image in this post is a portrait of Charles Dickens
painted in 1839 by Daniel Maclise. Courtesy of the National Portrait
Gallery, London <a data-mce-href="http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw01842/Charles-Dickens?LinkID=mp01294&role=sit&rNo=1" href="http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw01842/Charles-Dickens?LinkID=mp01294&role=sit&rNo=1" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw01842/Charles-Dickens?LinkID=mp01294&role=sit&rNo=1</span></a><br />
<br />
The Lawrence Collection is available from the National Library of Ireland <a data-mce-href="http://www.nli.ie/en/udlist/photographs-collections.aspx?article=f0bc5a62-13f3-4684-bb5f-2ca249d78fc4" href="http://www.nli.ie/en/udlist/photographs-collections.aspx?article=f0bc5a62-13f3-4684-bb5f-2ca249d78fc4" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">Photographic Archive</span></a>. Selected images of Cork may be viewed on <a data-mce-href="http://www.corkpastandpresent.ie/mapsimages/corkphotographs/lawrencecollection/" href="http://www.corkpastandpresent.ie/mapsimages/corkphotographs/lawrencecollection/" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">http://www.corkpastandpresent.ie/mapsimages/corkphotographs/lawrencecollection/</span></a><br />
<br />
Information on the buildings mentioned in this post come from the Dictionary of Irish Architects at the Irish Architectural Archive, Dublin. It is available on <a data-mce-href="http://www.dia.ie" href="http://www.dia.ie/" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">www.dia.ie</span></a><br />
<br />
<a data-mce-href="http://www.dia.ie" href="http://www.dia.ie/" target="_blank"> </a><br />
Read the Discovering Ireland post <i>An Irish Christmas Carol: Dickens in Ireland </i>on: <a data-mce-href="http://blog.discoverireland.com/2011/12/charles-dickens-in-ireland/" href="http://blog.discoverireland.com/2011/12/charles-dickens-in-ireland/" target="_blank"><span data-mce-style="color: #0000ff;" style="color: blue;">http://blog.discoverireland.com/2011/12/charles-dickens-in-ireland/</span></a><br />
<br />
More on Dicken's Cork visit is available here:<br />
<a data-mce-href="http://www.corkcitylibraries.ie/servicesandprogrammes/theconstantreaderbooksreading/welovedickens/ " href="http://www.corkcitylibraries.ie/servicesandprogrammes/theconstantreaderbooksreading/welovedickens/" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;"><span style="color: blue;">http://www.corkcitylibraries.ie/servicesandprogrammes/theconstantreaderbooksreading/welovedickens/</span></span></a><br />
<br />
Google Doodle courtesy of Google.com<br />
<a data-mce-href="https://www.google.com/" href="https://www.google.com/" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">Charles Dickens 200th birthday Google Doodle for Feb 7, 2012</span></a> <br />
<br />
<b>Charles Dickens at 200 </b> <br />
<a data-mce-href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/series/charles-dickens-at-200" href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/series/charles-dickens-at-200" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/series/charles-dickens-at-200</span></a><br />
<a data-mce-href="http://www.dickens2012.org/" href="http://www.dickens2012.org/" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">http://www.dickens2012.org/</span></a><br />
<span style="color: blue;"><a data-mce-href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=146437390" href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=146437390" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=146437390</span></a></span>Building 19th Century Irelandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01845699148405149486noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3548748444891730319.post-79322661376456731572012-02-04T17:05:00.000+00:002012-02-05T11:41:25.492+00:00Welcome to Building 19th Century Ireland on Blogger!<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: blue;"> New post coming shortly!</span> <a href="http://building19thcenturyireland.wordpress.com/" style="color: blue;" target="_blank"><span style="color: red;">Click here to see the Wordpress version of Building 19th Century Ireland</span> </a></div>
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