Bastion of all things academic and intellectual, Trinity College Dublin is currently hosting an exhibition titled ‘The Body in the Library – the great detectives 1841 to 1941’. Quoth the TCD website: The detective novel is a genre which generates great popular interest and also growing academic and critical attention. The library’s collections across the past two centuries reflect the development of this form of imaginative writing. This exhibition will illustrate the origins of the detective story in the mid-19th century, the growth in popularity of fictional heroes such as Sherlock Holmes, Father Brown and Hercule Poirot. There will be a focus on the first golden age of crime writing in the 1920s and 1930s.The exhibition opened on Thursday, and runs until June 15. There’s no details as to a specific Irish crime / mystery dimension, but hey – Trinners doing detective fiction? It’s a start.
I’m also hearing persistent rumours that NYU is planning a symposium on Irish crime fiction later this year. I’ll keep you posted.
I can't know whether Trinity will give Irish crime fiction its due, but I must say that that library is like a sort of preview of heaven to me, so I hope they do well by all of you.
ReplyDelete