At the Salon we are huge admirers of James Joyce. For a long time we have featured at least one study of Ulysses every year, as well as – at various times – explorations of the arguably more accessible Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Dubliners, as well as the often bafflingly inventive Finnegan’s Wake. In all of these works Joyce shows us why he is so widely regarded as one of the most brilliant and influential writers of the twentieth (or any) century.
In January 2026 Toby will again lead a group of keen readers through the twenty-one meetings that follow Leopold Bloom’s Odyssean progress through Joyce’s native city of Dublin towards its concluding episode: Molly Bloom’s erotic and heartfelt soliloquy that touches on love, sex, marriage, desire, loss and so much more . . . Tackling Ulysses alone can seem like hard work, many stumble and fall in the early pages, but reading it as part of an engaged and curious group makes it so much easier and, believe it or not, great fun (Joyce IS a funny writer). As one Salonista explains: “Joining the Ulysses salon was one of the best things I have ever done. This was a book I had wanted to read for years but never got past the first section . . . Toby so skilfully guided us through it, her knowledge of the text seemingly inexhaustible, that with her warmth and generosity and sensitivity she got everyone involved and the satisfaction of participating in the salon and in getting an understanding of this marvellous work was immense.“
This autumn, as a prelude to reading Ulysses, we are offering a study focusing on the brilliantly illuminating short stories in Dubliners. The fifteen stories in the collection, first published in 1914, remain fresh and vivid more than a hundred years later. They serve as a seductive gateway for readers new to Joyce’s writing: some of the characters and much of the atmosphere portrayed reappear in Ulysses, albeit realised in a completely different and innovative literary style. As the title implies, the stories are particular to a time and place, yet in our very different twenty-first century world the characters – their emotions, the experiences hopes and disappointments that shape them – are universally recognisable as human, evoked by a humane and clear-eyed writer of genius.
Our next Dubliners study will be led by Karina Jakubowicz, who many Salon regulars will know best for her expertise on Virginia Woolf (she is, amongst other things, creator of both The Virginia Woolf Podcast for Literature Cambridge and the Woolf in the World Substack). As a graduate of Trinity College Dublin with a particular interest in modernism and modernist representations of space and place, Karina is ideally placed to introduce this extraordinary work.
Dubliners, with eight weekly two-hour sessions, runs from 16 September – 4 November 2025.
Ulysses, twenty-one two-hour meetings, will run from 13 January – 16 June 2026.
