Strumpet City

Strumpet City (1969) is a historical novel by James Plunkett set in Dublin, Ireland, at the time of the Dublin Lock-out. In 1980, it was adapted into a successful TV drama by Hugh Leonard for RTÉ, Ireland's national broadcaster. The novel is an epic, tracing the lives of a dozen characters as they are swept up in the tumultuous events that affected Dublin between 1907 and 1914.

Reception

It was immensely popular when it was published. The writing is direct and powerfully evokes the terrible poverty and the peculiar intimacy of pre-independence Dublin. One theme is the essential goodness of people and the tenderness which survives the brutality of deprivation. The popularity of the novel also owed something to events in Ireland in the early 1970s, as The Troubles made the more traditional iconography of the insurrectionary period troublesome, while economic stagnation and social crisis fostered empathy for the former Dublin of tenements, working class heroes, and vagrant balladeers.

In 2013 Dublin City chose Strumpet City as its 'One City One Book' book of the year, in commemoration of the centenary of the 1913 Lockout.

External links

• Strumpet City is discussed in an obituary for James Plunkett in the Irish Independent
• Eileen Battersby asks: "Is Strumpet City the great Irish novel?" in The Irish Times
• 'Strumpet City': the impossible Irish novel Edited introduction by Fintan O'Toole to new edition of Strumpet City