What is Bloomsday?
On June 16, 1904, James Joyce met his future wife, Nora. He later memorialised the date as Bloomsday - the day of Leopold Bloom 's twenty-four-hour mock-odyssey around Dublin in Ulysses (1922). Ulysses is renowned for the daunting challenge it poses readers ( see here for a brief beginner's guide). It also weighs in at close to a thousand pages in the paperback edition. What happens on Bloomsday? Joyce - whose self-importance matched his monumental talent - believed Ulysses would provide scholars with 'a lifetime' of material. Doubtless, he would think it fitting that thousands now attend public readings of his work, most famously in Dublin, where Bloomsday is a major tourist event. What happens in Ulysses?