TLRH | Novel approaches to Dublin History: Historic Fiction and the City

Thursday, 2 December 2021, 7 – 8:30pm 'Novel approaches to Dublin
History: Historic Fiction and the City' is an online panel
discussion organised by Dublin History Research Network and
supported by the Trinity Long Room Hub. Historians of Dublin use
primary research to write the story of the city but many readers
learn Dublin’s story from historical fiction. The two forms of
writing are distinct but related. Is history writing creative? Must
historical fiction be accurate? ‘Novel approaches to Dublin
History’ tackles these and related questions. How does a historian
using research to portray a vision of Dublin differ from a creative
writer conjuring up the city from the same historical sources?
While their aims and audiences may be different, can each learn
from the other’s approach? What about the reader’s response to
well-crafted history writing, or to well-informed historical
fiction? Are they two different Dublins? Does it matter? In a
conversation between historians and creative writers, using some
recent works of Dublin historical fiction as a starting point this
event will consider both approaches and how they inform each other
to form our understanding of Dublin’s story. About the speakers Dr
Juliana Adelman is a lecturer in History at Dublin City University.
Her recent work Civilised by Beasts: animals and urban change in
nineteenth-century Dublin (2020) conjures up an unfamiliar city
through an imaginative use of historical sources. Among her earlier
publications 'Second City of science?: Dublin as a center of
calculation in the British imperial context, 1886-1912' (2018)
presents yet another view of Dublin. Dr Gillian O’Brien, Reader in
Modern Irish History at Liverpool John Moores University, has
co-edited Georgian Dublin (2008) and Portraits of the City: Dublin
and the Wider World (2012). Her research for The Darkness Echoing:
Exploring Ireland's Places of Famine, Death and Rebellion (2020)
examines the powerful emotional resonances which key historical
moments can create today. Dr Éibhear Walshe is Director of Creative
Writing in the School of English at University College Cork. Dublin
features significantly in his historical fiction writing. The
mid-twentieth century city in The Last Day at Bowen’s Court (2020),
the city which Handel encountered in The Trumpet Shall Sound (2019)
and nineteenth-century Dublin in The Diary of Mary Travers (2014)
all employ historical research to create imaginative fiction. The
conversation will be facilitated by Dr Lisa Marie Griffith, Digital
Repository of Ireland, an historian and keen reader of historic
fiction, who has written and edited numerous works on Dublin
history, and who has explored reading in the city through her tours
and podcasts on Dublin’s Independent Bookshops and Dublin’s book
clubs. Learn more at: https://www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/