Happy birthday, Oscar Wilde, Eugene O'Neill

It is the birthday of Irish playwright Oscar Wilde (1854) and Irish American playwright Eugene O'Neill (1888). Wilde wrote poems, short stories, and one novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890). His best known play is The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), a witty satire of Victorian England. O'Neill wrote poetry, newspaper stories, and some of the most enduring plays in literature, including The Emperor Jones (1920), Beyond the Horizon (1920), Anna Christie (1922), Desire Under the Elms (1924), Strange Interlude (1928) Mourning Becomes Electra (1931), Ah, Wilderness! (1933), The Iceman Cometh (1946), A Moon for the Misbegotten, and Long Day's Journey into Night (1956). He won three Pulitzer prizes (1920, 1922, and 1928) and, in 1936, the Nobel Prize for Literature. 

In Dublin's fair city ...

'Tis the month of the Irish, an' we'll be offerin' fer yer consideration, we will, a grand history of the beautiful capital city of the Other Holy Land. If you're Irish, wish you were Irish or thinkin' about becoming Irish on St. Paddy's Day, sure 'tis just the thing to warm the cockles of your heart, comin' as it does wrapped in Kelly green.

Our brogue might not be perfect, but you get the idea. Here's an 1818 edition of History of The City of Dublin From the Earliest Accounts to the Present Time. The two-volume set was published in London by T. Cadell and W Davies, in the Strand.

The hefty volumes contain annals, antiquities, ecclesiastical history, charters, public building, schools and social welfare institutions, plus all sorts of charts and lists of the most arcane detail any student of Dublin history could ever want. A copy of this history is in the collection of rare and unusual books at Lighthouse Books, ABAA.

Most of this set was compiled by two evidently energetic gentlemen, who passed away before the project was finished, leaving a third, Rev. Robert Walsh, to finish the monumental task alone. Rev. Walsh addresses the dilemma presented by the untimely passing of one John Warburton, who was a government employee evidently charged with supervision of record keeping, and the Rev. James Whitelaw, vicar of a prominent Irish Anglican church and a man generous with his time.