📍41 Brighton Square, Rathgar, Dublin 6, Ireland
1882 – 1884“I was born in a red-brick terrace at 41 Brighton Square in Rathgar in February 1882, the eldest surviving child of a charming, hard-drinking father and a gentle, devout mother. We lived in some fourteen houses before I left Ireland — Rathmines, a seaside house on Martello Terrace in Bray, and then, as my father's money drained away, ever smaller rented houses on the north side of Dublin. The Christmas dinner argument over Parnell in A Portrait of the Artist happened at our table in Bray. The Jesuits schooled me at Clongowes and then, free of fees, at Belvedere, while the furniture went to the pawnshop at home. I learned the city by walking it, from one address to the next, listening to how people talked. In 1904 I left with Nora Barnacle and spent my life in Trieste, Zurich and Paris, but I never wrote about anywhere but Dublin. I said that if the city were destroyed it could be rebuilt from the pages of Ulysses.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today