Stepping into Ulysses Rare Books (formerly known as Cathach Books), an antiquarian bookshop in Dublin, where a friend on a recent trip through the city directed me, gives you a privileged literary perspective. Walking past shelves upon shelves of first editions, which eventually became seminal works, by authors such as W. Yeats, Flann O’Brien, James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, and Samuel Beckett, to name
a few, is absolutely spellbinding. Ulysses Rare Books specialise in Irish literature, history, Children's classics and original maps, but the collection is not limited to great writers of yore; there are many contemporary works (also first editions) by authors such as Seamus Heaney and Roddy Doyle. It’s a family-run business, and atop the bookshelves is a charming mural running along the perimeter of the shop depicting writers and famous Dublin locales, including McDaids, a famous writers’ haunt and the setting for the opening of James Joyce’s story “Grace.”
From the New Yorker, February 2010
