‘How many! All these here once walked around Dublin. Faithful departed’. These were the thoughts of Leopold Bloom in Joyce’s Ulysses when Patrick Dignam was buried in Glasnevin Cemetary. The day was Thursday, 16 June, 1904. In Faithful Departed, first published in 1982, the late Kieran Hickey assembled a stunning collection of long-lost photographs by Robert French. In these haunting images, the ‘faithful departed’ walk into our vision once again. Here are the spacious avenues and crowded back-streets of Joyce’s Dublin, populated by every manner of person – the well-heeled professional classes; RIC constables and British army officers on parade; women with perambulators; street vendors and gangs of urchins. These photographs potently evoke the Dublin of 1904 – a city of trams and horse-drawn carriages; of sailing ships and barges on the Liffey; and of lively bandstands in summer – and blend with Des Hickey’s exquisite text to recreate the very atmosphere of Joyce’s Bloomsday. Published in association with the National Library of Ireland.
