Less well known, but probably a better writer than Bram Stoker, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu was born two hundred years ago today.

Did Irish democracy develop in the 1920s in the early years of the new state or were it seeds sown a long time before?

James Clarence Mangan, a lad from the Liberties, went courting a posh girl up in Ranelagh. At first things seemed to be going well …

Ireland’s Huguenot community – originally Calvinist refugees from persecution in France, produced many notable Irishmen, including Tom Lefroy, the man Jane Austen had hoped to marry, and the Gothic novelist Charles Maturin, author of Melmoth the Wanderer.

The life courses of two great Dublin writers of the nineteenth century, both born into the city’s grocery trade, show the vastly differing outcomes that the quality of parental care may lay out for children.

Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, whose bicentenary occurs this year, spent much of his childhood in the idyllic setting of the Phoenix Park, where his father was rector of the military school.

Sometimes it can be advisable to ignore the orders of one’s superiors if one wishes to avoid a pointless massacre.

Ireland was backward way back then, or so the story goes, but a capital city is always a capital city and who knows what you might get away with?

Dublin’s Stoneybatter was a happening place well before the hipsters started moving in five years ago. The alleged doings of Doyle the publican and the delectable Miss Devine were trending back in the 1830s.

There was perfect cleanliness and order in all parts of the establishment, and a large allowance of fresh air. We took leave of the kind and courteous Brother and left the Home for Deaf-mutes, heartily wishing that the blind boys could enjoy the privilege of being under the care of the excellent and intelligent Christian Brothers.

The new One City One Book choice, in succession to 2013’s Strumpet City, is to be launched early next month.