Brendan Lynch

Minister of State for Gaeltacht Affairs, Dinny McGinley, launched Brendan Lynch’s PRODIGALS AND GENIUSES  – The Writers and Artists of Dublin’s Baggotonia in Dublin’s United Arts Club on Nov 15, 2011.

Brendan Lynch, Mrs Margie Lynch and Minister Dinny McGinley

The first history of Dublin’s “Left Bank” and the first to celebrate Dublin’s UNESCO City of Literature award, PRODIGALS describes the authors and artists who inhabited the area around Baggot Street and the city’s Georgian quarter. These ranged from Oscar Wilde, George Moore and W B Yeats to Samuel Beckett, Brendan Behan  and Maeve Binchy, and included no fewer than four winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature.

The Minister described a PRODIGALS as a

“wonderful celebration of  national treasures”.

He praised Brendan Lynch’s

“insightful, thoughtful and informed writing which would bring the writers to a whole new audience.”

Brendan Lynch said;

“Outside of Paris, there is no city area anywhere in the world which saw such a concentration of talent. These hard-working and frequently deprived men and women were real patriots. Without bombs of guns, they brought honour to Ireland and promoted us internationally. Their work spans the generations and the continents.”

The author added:

“Sadly, sculptor Eamon O’Doherty, who helped me, died before tonight’s launch. Hopefully, Dublin City Council will one day honour his memory by reinstating his wonderful Anna Livia sculpture in O’Connell Street, where it rightly belongs.”

The large attendance included writers Peter Costello, Adrian Kenny Robert Nicholson, Eoin O’Brien, Ulick O’Connor and Noel Kissane and Gerry Lyne, former Keepers of Manuscripts at Dublin’s National Library.

"More, please!" Peadar & Treasa MacManus with Donal Whelan

Author, Brendan Lynch, regales captive audience

Val O'Donnell reads Myles na Gopaleen

“PRODIGALS AND GENIUSES. The Writers and Artists of Dublin’s Baggotonia” is Brendan Lynch’s latest book.
(Ministerial launch report and photographs here)

London has Fitzrovia, Paris its Left Bank. But Georgian Dublin boasts an equally atmospheric Bohemian quarter. Centred on Baggot and Leeson Streets, and girdled by the Grand Canal, it is the unmapped village of writers, artists and ne’er-do-wells which in the 1950’s became known as “Baggotonia”.

Its inhabitants and habitués include four winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature and nearly every nineteenth and twentieth century Irish writer of note.

From Oscar Wilde, Oliver St. John Gogarty, George Moore and George Bernard Shaw to Samuel Beckett, Elizabeth Bowen, Seamus Heaney, James Joyce and Flann O’Brien.

And a profusion of artists from Jack B. Yeats to Mainie Jellett and Camille Souter, who painted in the shadow of Francis Bacon’s Baggot Street birthplace.

Brendan Behan’s neighbours included Patrick Kavanagh, Frank O’Connor, Liam O’Flaherty and Mary Lavin. John Banville, Maeve Binchy and Colm Toibín were later arrivals.

Based on interviews and contemporary accounts – and a timely celebration of Dublin’s designation as a UNESCO City of Literature – “PRODIGALS AND GENIUSES” is an entertaining and enlightening history of a remarkable time and place.

Foreword writer J. P. Donleavy (author of “The Ginger Man”) described PRODIGALS as an overdue and comprehensive record of a rich period in Irish literary history. He continued:

“Brendan Lynch’s book evokes vibrant memories of an ancient Dublin. And could there be any other city in the world more worth speaking about? Old friends come back to life whose minds still speak from the soul. Ancient sorrows remembered to haunt, but in which a bit of bright light still glows.”

With over 300pp and 120 illustrations, PRODIGALS AND GENIUSES costs €19.95 (Stg£18.95).

ISBN 978-1-905785-96-4.
Publication date: November 2011
Published by: The Liffey Press; David Givens, The Liffey Press, Ashbrook House, 10 Main Street, Raheny, Dublin 5.
Tel: 01-8511458.
Email: theliffeypress@gmail.com.
URL: www.theliffeypress.com

Signed copies (incl hardcover €35) from the author at: mrg_lynch@yahoo.ie