Strolling through Dublin's idyllic streets, it can be easy to question whether you're walking through an actual city or a fantastic, novelistic of it, as so many great books have been written and set here. During this 3-hour Dublin Literary Tour we'll look at the city's most illustrious writers, including James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, W. B. Yeats, and Oscar Wilde, visit some key sites where they either worked or depicted, and explore how they shaped Dublin, and vice versa.

Our tour begins in Merrion Square, home to Oscar Wilde and the cultural heart of the city. Here we'll discuss the religious and social settings of 19th and early 20th century Dublin and how they affected the likes of Wilde, as well as Joyce and Yeats. We'll discuss the social circles surrounding these famous authors, from their strict families to university colleagues and amorous companions.

After setting the scene of Irish society of the time, we'll proceed to the National Library and Trinity College, contemplating, and maybe stopping at the pub of choice of Samuel Beckett, Oscar Wilde, and James Joyce. We'll discuss the universities and other cultural establishments that were fundamental to the development of literary culture in Dublin, while taking in the neighborhood that was so familiar to authors and to their characters.

We'll focus our attentions especially on James Joyce; while he emigrated from Dublin in his early twenties, he wrote about the city constantly throughout his career, stating that "...if I can get to the heart of Dublin I can get to the heart of all the cities of the world. In the particular is contained the universal." Together, we'll visit several places in the area that serve as the setting for his most famous novel, Ulysses. We'll also stop by the hotel where Joyce met his wife Nora Barnacle and a beautiful little shop nearby that figures prominently in Ulysses and is run to this day by a passionate group of Joycean enthusiasts and scholars.

At the conclusion of the tour we may take a turn reading from a scene on the great novel in the very place the episode is set, before retiring across the road for a drink and to discuss the novel, and further literary links in the area.

By the end of our walk, we will have woven a narrative of Dublin and the connections to its amazing authors in addition to vividly bringing books and poems to life through the sites of this magical city.