Nora Barnacle was born in Galway in March 1884 and attended the Convent of Mercy National School there until she was twelve. She worked for a while as a Portress at the Presentation Convent, and in 1904 she moved to Dublin where she worked as a chambermaid at Finn’s Hotel. She and Joyce met on 10 June 1904 and we believe they went out together for the first time on Thursday 16 June 1904, the date commemorated in Joyce’s Ulysses. Nora eloped with Joyce in October that year and they were rarely separated until Joyce’s death in 1941. The portrait of Nora was made in Trieste in 1913 by Tullio Silvestri who declared that Nora was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. The original of this painting is in the collections of the State University of New York at Buffalo.
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