Award-winning, Independent Bookshop in South Dublin

The Company of Books is an award-winning, independent bookshop in Ranelagh, Dublin 6. We stock an extensive range of fiction, non-fiction and children’s books which are available in the shop and on our site. 

Finding Mangan

€22.99
1
Product Details
ISBN: 9780717194834
Author: Bridget Hourican
Format: Paperback

June 1849: Dr William Wilde, passing a wretched hovel in Dublin’s Liberties, discovers James Clarence Mangan in a state of indescribable misery and squalor. Aged just 46, the man dubbed ‘Ireland’s National Poet’ is about to succumb to the cholera epidemic that is gripping famine ravaged Ireland. August 2008: Writer Bridget Hourican encounters Mangan during a Liberties lock-in with that other great Irish poet, Shane MacGowan, who found inspiration in Mangan’s poetry.

Alcoholic, opium addict, Romantic, Famine poet, Dublin street character and hero of James Joyce, the mercurial Mangan begins to obsess Bridget. The surviving biographical material – scant, subjective, sometimes falsified – both fascinates and frustrates her and she determines to find him. Who was this Baudelaire of The Liberties – this lurker in Irish history whose enigmatic presence helped determine its course? As the lines between research and real life become blurred, Bridget starts to notice aspects of her life bleeding into Mangan’s.

An obsession becomes a haunting and she realises that the only way to truly reach Mangan is to reckon with her own ghosts. Finding Mangan resurrects Ireland’s most enigmatic literary figuring, restoring his rightful place in the national consciousness.

Finding Mangan
  

Awards

About The Company Of Books

The Company of Books opened at 96 Ranelagh Village in November 2009 and has been gathering good reviews and loyal customers since.  Country Finalist for Independent Bookshop of the Year 2021 (Booksellers Association) and Dublin Winner of An Post Bookshop of the Year.

We have an eclectic mix of fiction, non-fiction and children’s books offering something for everyone. Spot a review of a book you’d like to read? Contact us and if we don’t have it, we’ll order it for you.

We also sell book vouchers and a range of beautiful cards and stationery.

Independent bookshop
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