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NUI Galway alumni and friends will celebrate the connection between James Joyce and Galway city with a pre-Bloomsday recital in Newman House, St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin on Thursday next 14 June at 7.30pm. The recital is part of a series of Bloomsweek recitals featuring Ireland’s leading classical guitarist, John Feeley, accompanied by NUI Galway graduate and James Joyce enthusiast, Professor Fran O’Rourke of UCD, who will also be providing background information on Joyce.

Nora Barnacle left Galway early in 1904. She was 20 years old, a strong-willed girl running from a tyrannical uncle who disapproved of her latest boy friend. Within weeks of her arrival in Dublin she would become the muse and lover of James Joyce and the inspiration of some and his greatest works — Greta Conroy in The Dead, Bertha the common law wife in Exiles and Molly Bloom in Ulysses — all share some of Nora’s character and experiences. In October of that same year Nora and Jim would elope to Europe and in due course step on to the pages of literary history. She would return to her native city only twice during her 47 years of exile before dying in Zurich in 1951, having lived 67 tumultuous years.