The Shelbourne. A Centre in Dublin Life for more Than a Century. London: Harrap, 1951. First Edition. Pp, 200. Cloth boards in pictorial dust jacket. Jacket lightly faded & spotting to endpapers, otherwise a nice bright copy.

Illustrated with fifteen plates and fourteen line drawings (including the dust jacket) by Norah McGuinness.

‘The account of a famous Dublin landmark – the Shelbourne Hotel – is, in effect, the story of the Irish city over the past twelve decades, in brilliant miniature.’

Bowen paints a picture of what was, in the hotel’s earlier days, the second city of the Empire, then the battleground of Irish independence and civil strife, and eventually the capital of a republic.