Modernity and Consumption in Nineteenth-Century Ireland

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