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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
in stores and worth perusing, May 19, 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: James Joyce's Dubliners: An Illustrated Edition With Annotations (Hardcover)
I found several copies of the book, new and unused, for sale at Heffers bookstore in Cambridge, UK. The drawings, photographs, and newspaper clippings provide a first hand sense of what Joyce's Dublin was like then. Like a mail order fountain pen, whose newspaper advertisement from Christmas 1903 is reproduced in the book. Maybe Gabriel Conroy bought one. I've never used a fountain pen - to me the advertisement is a subtle reminder of how distant Joyce's Dublin is from us now. Warning - It's tempting to spend more time reading the notes and annotations than reading Joyce himself.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A great book and wonderful treasure, September 26, 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: James Joyce's Dubliners: An Illustrated Edition With Annotations (Hardcover)
The voluminous notes gave me a richer understanding of this work. The book is beautfully laid out and much easier to read than other "annotated" books. I wish the author's would tackle ULYSSES next.
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Living Dead, July 13, 2000
My only complete reading of Dubliners was from this version. What makes Dubliners so amenable to an annotated edition is that it is essentially an immediately accessible work of fiction - Joyce's only (the Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man being slightly trickier). Why are annotations so crucial to this work? The multiple place and character references make up a significant portion of these stories: Without a knowledge of the settings you're left with the virtuoso, stand-alone, psychological complexities of Joyce's style.
For example, Margaret Mary Allicott. Passing reference is made to her in Dubliners; Buck Mulligan refers to her also in Ulysses as "Margaret Mary ANYcock". Without annotations, what can you make of that? Who was she? The annotated Dubliners points out that she was a figure of considerable religious veneration in Dublin at the turn of the century. Icons of her graced many Irish homes. Seeking sainthood in the Roman Catholic Church, she would drink only dirty washwater and eat only the pus from her numerous sores. This gives some idea of the crudity of public ideas of morality at the time. The annotation permits you to enjoy not only the bizarre Irish Zeitgeist but also appreciate the Buck's nasty pun. This is just one example of the value of annotations for this work. You can easily imagine that the instances are numerous, and that the pictures included throughout this annotated Dubliners also breathe life into the stories.
Most of all, if you like Joyce's fiction, this is a fun copy. And remember, these stories were originally read by people who *did* understand the numerous references and allusions. My experience of Dubliners is that this is the only truly readable version. Enjoy these heartwarming yarns of a city's moral and psychological twilight: Paralysis, disillusionment, collapse.
Marvelous work.
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