Dublin Writers Museum

An 18th century townhouse filled with first editions and the literary memorabilia of famous Irish writers

Ireland's great writers are legion; the short list includes Jonathan Swift, Oscar Wilde, James Joyce, Thomas Mann, Roddy Doyle, and Nobelists George Bernard Shaw, W. B. Yeats, and Samuel Beckett.

The Dublin Writer’s Museum in a lovely 1769 townhome celebrates Ireland's famed scribes. It’s really just two rooms of first editions and talismanic oddities (Brenden Behan’s typewriter and press card; Samuel Beckett’s telephone), but it takes at least half an hour to read through all the plaques—longer if you listen to all the recorded readings and quotes on the audio tour.

Here are an 1804 Gulliver’s Travels; a signed first edition of Ulysses; and the original playbill for Waiting for Godot.

Die-hard Bloom-heads will make also the pilgrimage to the nearby James Joyce Centre.

Tips

• Planning your time: The Dublin Writer's Museum takes 20–30 minutes to browse, an hour if you listen to all the recordings on the audio tour.
• Tours: The following tours visit the Dublin Writers Museum:
  • Dublin Literary Pub Crawl
• Dublin Pass: You can get into the Dublin Writer's Museum for free using the Dublin Pass, plus 10% off in the gift shop on purchases of €20 or more.
• Joint ticket: There's a joint ticket covering the Dublin Writer's Museum, James Joyce Museum (not the nearby J.J. Centre, but another museum outside town), The Shaw Birthplace, and Malahide Castle for €11.50.
• Souveniers for bookish sorts: As you might imagine, the museum's gift shop is probably the best one-stop shopping in Dublin for books, plays, and poems by all the great Irish writers, from the classics to contemporary scribes.