Introduction to the fourth issue

The fourth issue of the James Joyce Online Notes contains thirty-one articles, each of which seeks to elucidate some aspect of the people, environment, language, and allusions which form the backdrop to Joyce’s life and novels. Robert Janusko provides documentary evidence for three sources cited in Joyce’s notebooks; Harald Beck identifies Joseph Patrick Nannetti’s father (at variance here with the Dictionary of Irish Biography); John Simpson investigates the “Madams” of Lower Mecklenburgh Street in a “lupanarology” (Vincent Deane’s word) which traces their progress through different addresses in Dublin over thirty years or so.

Other articles identify the real Emily Lyons, whose parting from Nora Barnacle in Galway Harbour in the mid 1890s is so evocatively described by Joyce in his notes to Exiles; the expression lying behind the name “Mrs Poll Ash”; and the doctor (though not Dr Freud) “who can tell us what those words mean”. And speaking of bunions, we look at Lenehan and Lord Dundreary “married and settled”.

Other features new to this issue include “keywords” added at the end of each article, by means of which readers can discover further articles on the same general topic: the keyword “American Civil War” at the article “Vengeance and the shores of Manhattan”, for example, leads to four other articles referencing the Civil War in America. A new tab (“Joyce’s Library”) takes the reader to pages containing a list of the books that formed Joyce’s library in Trieste, with links wherever possible to facsimiles of the texts themselves (often to the impression Joyce owned). Finally, the “Gifford Corrections” page has been restyled so that the notes appear in text order.

See the full Contents of this issue here.

Harald Beck

John Simpson

Editors, JJON