Rains, Stephanie
(2007)
Modernity and Consumption in Nineteenth-Century Ireland.
Early Popular Visual Culture, 5 (3).
pp. 285-300.
ISSN 1746-0654
Abstract
During the 1890s, a series of large-scale, spectacular charity bazaars was held in Dublin.
All of these bazaars attracted more than 80,000 visitors each, as well as extensive press coverage
and a number of ‘celebrity’ guests. Of these, the largest and most successful, billed as
‘Araby: A Grand Oriental Fete’, was held in 1894 and would eventually become the basis
for Joyce’s short story of the same name. Araby and the other 1890s bazaars provide detailed
information on the development and style of Irish popular visual culture of the fin-de-siècle.
Clearly aware of their place within similar international events of the time, the bazaar organisers
showed a self-conscious and competitive modernity in their programmes of events, their
advertising and their visual style. In their mimicking of 1890s consumer culture, especially
that of the department store, the Dublin bazaars also highlighted the ways in which consumption
had also become an embedded leisure activity within bourgeois Irish culture. This article
examines the ways in which the 1890s bazaars illustrate the forms of Irish modernity during
that decade, and discusses how it relates to international popular visual culture of the time.
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