Introduction to the fifteenth issue

It will come as no surprise to anyone interested in the real world behind the fiction of Joyce’s novels that this issue of the James Joyce Online Notes contains two articles involving the layout of buildings. Aidan Collins examines some late-nineteenth century plans for the Holles Street Hospital, dating from before 1904 and so showing the layout of the old hospital that Joyce and Gogarty would have known. Alongside this, in the Environs section of the website, Ian Gunn investigates whether the Blooms had an internal toilet – though he necessarily bases his work on historical and literary evidence, as floor plans are lacking.

Vincent Deane finds Bloom, late in a confusing day, confusing Mercadante and Meyerbeer, and John Simpson uncovers echoes of Joyce’s “shrieks of silence” in the music hall of the 1890s. William Brockman and Sabrina Alonso reconstruct the performing repertoire of The English Players, the theatrical group which causes Joyce to lock horns with Henry Carr, ex-soldier and British Consular official, and Ronan Crowley traces Joyce’s reading of Camille Flammarian’s Astronomy for Amateurs for quotations from the book hidden in Ulysses.

Last but not least, Harald Beck looks for the identity of the UCD student who “assumed the toga girilis” in her contributions to St Stephen’s magazine and doubtless elsewhere, tracing her life – and her academic success - from her origins in southern Ireland up to Loreto College in St Stephen’s Green in Dublin.

Harald Beck

John Simpson

Editors, JJON