Bloomsday Bloomsday Bloomsday is a commemoration and celebration of the life of Irish writer James Joyce, observed annually in Dublin and elsewhere on 16 June, the day his novel "Ulysses" takes place in 1904, the date of his first outing with his wife-to-be, Nora Barnacle, and named after its protagonist Leopold Bloom. The English compound word "Bloomsday" is usually used in Irish as well, though some publications call it . The first mention of such a celebration is to be found in a letter by Joyce to Miss Weaver of 27 June 1924, which refers to "a group of people who
Leopold Bloom and threatened because of his being perceived as a Jew. Richard Ellmann, Joyce's biographer, described Bloom as "a nobody", who "has virtually no effect upon the life around him". In this Ellmann found nobility: "The divine part of Bloom is simply his humanity - his assumption of a bond between himself and other created being." Joyce told Sylvia Beach that Holbrook Jackson resembled Bloom. Writer-director Mel Brooks used the name "Leo Bloom" for the mousy accountant in his film/musical "The Producers". Leo is a nervous accountant, prone to panic attacks, who keeps a security blanket to calm himself. Nevertheless, it