The Writers Museum, Dublin

One of the first things my husband and I did when we visited Dublin two years ago was to visit The Writers Museum. (Yes, I got into trouble for taking a few pictures of Jonathan Swift’s manuscript of Gulliver’s Travels, but I truly didn’t see the sign posted prominently at the ticket desk which prohibited such activity. I blame it on jet lag!) It was once the home of one of the Jamesons of the whiskey family, and it is still elegant in a rickety kind of way. The floors and stairs creak, the railings move a little when you grab them, the hallways are narrow and dusky, and the air smells of old things. I’m sure the need for

repairs and updates outpaces the donations received, but I’m grateful that there is such a place that celebrates the remarkable contributions of so many Irish writers. I felt the same sensation seeing the faded writing of Jonathan Swift as I did standing in front of Van Gogh’s self portrait many years ago in Paris—spine tingling awe to be standing in such close proximity to genius.

The museum exhibits all manner of writerly things, manuscripts, letters, portraits, even personal items of such writers as Beckett, Joyce, Sheridan, Shaw, Swift, Wilde, and Yeats. That’s where I discovered that Oscar Wilde wrote children’s stories and that the writer Edna O’Brien (whose work I love) isn’t persona non grata in Ireland after all. That’s also where I discovered that there are so many more Irish writers I don’t know and haven’t read than those I do. For a small island of just under five million souls, Ireland can boast of an extraordinary number of brilliant writers.