
Lives Less Ordinary
Dublin's Fitzwilliam Square, 1798-1922
Andrew Hughes(Author)
The Liffey Press
Published on 31. January 2024
Book
Paperback/Softback
312 pages
978-1-7397892-7-5 (ISBN)
Description
"So that's our setting. Sixty-nine houses, four corners of Georgian Dublin but just one address. Scope enough for some remarkable tales and extraordinary lives. Homes that ... provide a backdrop for drawing room intrigue, revelry and temperance, devilry and romance; the abandon of artistic expression and the restraint of social convention.... So follow me, dear reader, into Fitzwilliam Square."
Fitzwilliam Square on the south side of Dublin provides the setting and a true-life cast of characters for Lives Less Ordinary, which examines how the people of this Georgian square impacted on the history of Dublin and the wider world. These disparate denizens from a small residential enclave permeated every walk of Irish life - political, legal and cultural - in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
In this updated edition, we follow the inhabitants of Fitzwilliam Square into nineteenth century courtrooms; we witness their soldier sons on a succession of battlefields through personal reminiscences; we examine their remarkable artistic and literary output; we hear amusing anecdotes about the politicians, doctors and academics who lived there, including tales about duels, ghosts and political and personal scandals.
On their own, the sketches offer an intriguing portrait of individual lives, but woven together they provide a fascinating overview of Irish life at a particular place and time. The stories are varied and wide-ranging, but they are anchored by the fact that they only involve those inhabitants of the sixty-nine houses of Dublin's Fitzwilliam Square.
Fitzwilliam Square on the south side of Dublin provides the setting and a true-life cast of characters for Lives Less Ordinary, which examines how the people of this Georgian square impacted on the history of Dublin and the wider world. These disparate denizens from a small residential enclave permeated every walk of Irish life - political, legal and cultural - in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
In this updated edition, we follow the inhabitants of Fitzwilliam Square into nineteenth century courtrooms; we witness their soldier sons on a succession of battlefields through personal reminiscences; we examine their remarkable artistic and literary output; we hear amusing anecdotes about the politicians, doctors and academics who lived there, including tales about duels, ghosts and political and personal scandals.
On their own, the sketches offer an intriguing portrait of individual lives, but woven together they provide a fascinating overview of Irish life at a particular place and time. The stories are varied and wide-ranging, but they are anchored by the fact that they only involve those inhabitants of the sixty-nine houses of Dublin's Fitzwilliam Square.
More details
Edition
Revised edition
Language
English
Place of publication
Dublin
Ireland
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Illustrations
60
Dimensions
Height: 168 mm
Width: 236 mm
Thickness: 24 mm
Weight
676 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-7397892-7-5 (9781739789275)
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Schweitzer Classification
Person
Andrew Hughes is an archivist and historian, and the author of The Convictions of John Delahunt and The Coroner's Daughter, which was chosen as the prestigious 'One Dublin One Book' for 2023.