Introduction to the sixteenth issue

The central buildings of Ulysses continue to exercise a strange fascination over readers. They may be insignificant in real terms, like 7 Eccles Street, but they develop a mythology of their own through countless readings, films, and just the passage of time. How well did Joyce know them? Is his description accurate? How can we prove any of this. Ian Gunn has done most in recent years to answer these questions and more with regard to No 7. In this issue of JJON he draws things together with what "was initially going to be a correction of a correction of an update", but finished up telling "the story of the uncovering of the structure of No. 7 Eccles Street from the beginning". If that whets your interest, turn to Beyond the façade – Uncovering the physical structure of No. 7 Eccles Street.

     Vivien Igoe has published biographies of almost all of the "minor characters" in Ulysses, but not Katey Keogh. We are delighted that she has rectified that for us here, using her trademark assimilation of documentary research and personal contact, in Katey Keogh, Assistant at the Volta Cinema, Dublin.

    One of the many strengths of contributors to JJON is their ability to track down the emergence of an expression which in due course appears in Joyce's works. Marc A. Mamigonian examines "Take off that white hat", and compares it with "Who stole the donkey", two cries from the stalls of Dublin theatreland in Joyce's day. Terence Killeen revisits an editorial in the Freeman's Journal of September 1912 "about the Styrian cure for the foot-and-mouth disease".

     Áine Nolan explores "The Ursuline Manual in 'Circe'", and its relationship to the "Prayer for the suffering souls" alluded to in Ulysses, and Harald Beck considers whether the first "Lady Freemason" really did hide in a clock to uncover the society's secrets, as Nosey Flynn gleefully recounts.

    Next year will mark the tenth year since JJON began publishing. Please do mail the editors if you have an article, or a thought for an article, that you'd like to discuss (jjon.org [at] googlemail.com).

Harald Beck

John Simpson

Editors, JJON