Provenance of the Sandycove Atlas
Producing the video led to a major step forward in strengthening the provenance of the Sandycove Atlas. The Joyceans featured in the video are: Alice Reilly, curator of the Joyce Tower Museum; Eamonn Buckley, proprietor of the bookshop where the Atlas was bought, and David Norris, a writer on the life and times of James Joyce and a Senator in the Irish Parliament for 37 years as well as many other things.
Between them they established, to a high degree of probability, that the Atlas was used in a school, was bought in the area where Clifton School was established, and would have appealed to the real-life Francis Irwin, head of Clifton School from 1900 to 1907.
Alice Reilly, Curator of Joyce’s Tower Museum: Was it a school atlas?
“Yes, I think, like you say, it is very much like a school atlas. So you could imagine it would be like the atlas that Stephen Dedalus might have used in the schoolhouse in Dalkey. Or might be one of the books of many that that he could use for that purpose.”
Eamonn Buckley, bookseller, who sold Tim the Atlas: Did he acquire the Atlas in the local area for Clifton School?
“I’d say, ‘Oh yes that’s definitely, that’s definitely come from the Dun Laoghaire area.’ I don’t travel around the country.”
David Norris: Joycean author, among many other things: Would the Atlas have appealed to Francis Irwin, the head of Clifton School?
[Tim] Because isn’t it just the sort of atlas that Mr. Deasy would choose for his . . .
[David] School? Might be, yes. What is the Englishman’s boast? That ‘on his empire, the sun never sets’?.