At Home and Abroad

Bloomsday is an international Literary Holyday celebrating James Joyce's seminal novel Ulysses in which Leopold Bloom, a Dublin Jew, and a cityful of other colourful characters go about their lives in the city of Dublin on June 16th, 1904 Joyce chose this particular date for Bloom's perambulations as a tribute to his wife and muse, Nora Barnacle, whom he first encountered outside Trinity College, close to Finn's Hotel where she worked as a chambermaid. Although initially mistaking him for a Norwegian sailor, she agreed to meet him. June 16th marks their first romantic rendezvous.