'In these days of massive over-production, not all books are essential. It can truly be said that this one is. Elegantly designed, it is up to the high standards of UCD Press. It will be welcomed as an important addition to Joycean scholarship by Irish writers. Moreover, it should find a place in any library devoted to the Irish Literary Revival and the history of modernism in Ireland, as well as to life and culture in Victorian and Edwardian Dublin. Vivien Igoe deserves the gratitude of the many readers and scholars who will be delighted by what she has done.'Peter Costello, Studies, Spring 2018; 'Vivien Igoe's The Real People of Joyce's Ulysses, published by UCD Press, more than provides the essential biographical information about the real characters which populate Joyce's novel ... Vivien's book provides the reader who is floundering amid the welter of names with indispensable help ... It will undoubtedly become an indispensable 'vade mecum, for all Joyceans.' The Gibraltar Chronicle, 14 October 2016 'The presence of these real people in Ulysses, together with decades of diligent inquiry and research by Vivien Igoe, have together resulted in a unique reference resource for a vanished generation that would be the envy of any city. Keep a copy beside the bed. Who knows, you may find a long-lost ancestor!' The Irish Catholic, 21 July 2016 'Vivien Igoe's work excels in the detail and depth of the biographical information she presents ... Igoe, who has long been devoted to Joyce studies and research ... has demonstrated the amazing range and variety of the world of Ulysses.' Terence Killeen, The Irish Times, 11 June 2016 'This is a book that few lovers of Joyce will be able to resist, and they should be urged not to resist ... [it] could only have been written by a Dubliner with excellent connections. Igoe is such a person ... [her] sources are many and varied and she spells out her methodology with care: oral history was clearly important, especially in identifying those to whom Joyce gave fictional names ... This is a book lovers of Joyce will have to have. I recommend it.' Frances Devlin-Glass, Tintean.org, 6 July 2016 'This is a gazetteer to the real and incontestable world of Ulysses, the human tapestry which Joyce's imagination embroidered, and then coloured and added texture. Igoe is a living link to that now-faded world ... [This] volume could not be more lively or lavish. It's large, but highly accessible ... Bountiful illustration put faces to people caricaturised by Joyce ... The book is essential for Joyceans, but anyone interested in Dublin history will find it companionable too.' Gavin Corbett, The Sunday Times, 10 July 2016 'In The Real People of Joyce's Ulysses, Vivien Igoe supplies the backgrounds not only of people - some 800 of them - but horses too.' Times Literary Supplement, 22 July 2016 'Vivien Igoe has done some extraordinary tracking down herself. And in this wonderful and impressive piece of scholarship, she has added hugely to what is one of our most timeless and ever-rewarding works of literature.' Sunday Independent, 22 August 2016 'Vivien Igoe has written a book that should be considered an essential reference work for anybody exploring Ulysses or Joyce's Dublin. It should be on every Joycean's bookshelf.' Irish Studies Review, 2017 'Vivien Igoe has been working away in Dublin since the early 1960s, collecting material for this essential book. It will enrich beyond measure our understanding of the world that Joyce drew upon for his work ... There must be more than 600 biographical entries, with some 150 illustrations, many of them obscure and some never seen in print before.' John Wyse Jackson, James Joyce Broadsheet, February 2017 'In The Real People of Joyce's Ulysses, the Dubliner and Joyce scholar Vivien Igoe proves the case for Ulysses as a novel possessed by Dublin, rather than the novel that is the world's possession. In the novel, Joyce foregrounds the inner lives of only a few characters. Around them, his shifting chorus of minor characters reflects the city's streams of consciousness, while an outer layer of names and historical references holds the drama in space and time like the embankment of the Liffey River. Dr. Igoe lingers with every minor character and tracks down almost every allusion. The Real People of Joyce's Ulysses is, for want of a better word, Joycean-joyous in its fondling of language and place, as rich and complex in flavor as the feety savour of green cheese in the Gorgonzola sandwich that Leopold Bloom eats at the bar of Davy Byrne's pub.' Dominic Green, New Criterion, May 2017 'The Real People of Joyce's Ulysses is an important book in Joyce studies ... The publisher should be congratulated for a well-designed book ... [It] will stimulate in ways that are useful and delightful and will help us Joyceans to stand on solid ground under the characters that Joyce imagined in his grand mimesis. [It] is a new instrument with new possibilities for Joyce studies.' Sidney Feshbach, James Joyce Literary Supplement, spring 2017
