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The writer who most prolifically put Dublin on the literary map, Joyce (1882–1941) was born and educated in the city. He met Nora Barnacle on 16 June 1904 and, although they did not marry for 30 years, it became the date for events in his epic work Ulysses , published in Paris in 1922. Dubliners (1914), Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) and Finnegan’s Wake (1938) are among his other works.

Willliam Butler (1865–1939), brother of the painter Jack B Yeats, was born in Dublin. His first volume of poetry The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems was well received and later volumes confirmed his status as a leading poet. His play On Baile’s Strand was chosen for the Abbey Theatre’s opening in 1904 (see Abbey and Peacock Theatres).

Born in Dublin, Shaw (1856–1950) moved to England in 1876. Starting as a book reviewer for the Pall Mall Gazette , he was to become a prolific playwright; The Devil’s Disciple (1897) and Pygmalion (1914) are just two of his works. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925.

Swift (1667–1745) was born and educated in Dublin (see St Patrick’s Cathedral) and established a reputation as a wit through his satirical works. A Modest Proposal (1729), one of his most brilliant – if grim – satires, suggested feeding poor children to the rich. It is ironic that his work, Gulliver’s Travels (1726), is a children’s classic.

Wilde (1854–1900) was born at Westland Row, Dublin, and became a classics scholar at Trinity College and later at Oxford. His highly popular plays, full of acid wit, include An Ideal Husband (1895) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895). His imprisonment for homosexual offences inspired The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898), but he died, humiliated, in 1900.

Dublin-born O’Casey (1880–1964) worked on the railways and became an active trades unionist. He achieved instant success with The Shadow of a Gunman (1923), set in the Dublin slums, followed by the play Juno and the Paycock in 1924 and his best-known work The Plough and the Stars in 1926. His later plays never had the appeal of the early works.

French Huguenot by descent, after a distinguished career at Trinity College, Beckett (1906–89) spent much of his life in France. The play Waiting for Godot (1952) made him an international name. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969.

Burke (1729–97) was born in Dublin, went to Trinity College and then to London to study law. A champion of individual liberty against the monarchy, his Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) established his reputation.

Although born in Dublin, Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973) spent much of her childhood in Cork. Her years in London are evoked in her novels, including The Heat of the Day (1949).

Kavanagh (1904–67), born in Monaghan, went to London in 1939 and began a career as a poet and journalist. His reputation was established with a long and bitter poem of rural life, The Great Hunger (1942).