Parsons Bookshop: At the Heart of Bohemian Dublin, 1949-1989

by Brendan Lynch

Lynce (Triumph of the Red Devil) has written a scholarly book as addictive as an issue of Hello! She traces the creation in 1949 of the titular bookshop (which actually got its start as a general store stocking hardware) through its closure by owner Miss May Flaherty in 1988, using anecdotes and interviews with bookship staff as well as writers and their friends and relations. Though she arranges the book in roughly chronological order, the chapters weave back and forth over the years tracing events in the lives of famous bookshop the rivalry between playwright Brendan Behan and poet Patrick Kavanagh; a drunken celebration of the anniversary of Bloomsday by (among others) novelist Flann O'Brien and Tom Joyce, James Joyce's cousin; and the heydays of the Pike Theater and the Palace Bar. This is neither a literary biography nor a history of 20th-century literary Dublin; rather, it is an intimate, eccentric and loving look into a time and a place (Parsons) that are now gone. Recomended for large public and academic libraries with Anglo-Irish literature collections"" -- Library Journal.

252 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2007

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Reviews

[Gearóid Ó · Rating 5 out of 5]

A superb social and literary history at one of the richest periods in terms of the massive number of poets, novelists and painters who lived or worked in this small patch of Dublin. The book shop, it’s stock and staff brightened what was sometimes a very dull and parochial Ireland.