Talbot - Dotter of Her Father's Eyes - excerpt

Dotter of Her Father's Eyes is a 2012 graphic novel written by Mary M. Talbot with artwork by her husband, Bryan Talbot. It is an intriguing story about two daughters and two fathers. One female character is Mary Talbot herself and the second is Lucia Joyce, daughter of the modernist writer James Joyce. Lucia’s biography and Mary’s memoires are interweaving in this story and they are differentiated by different sepia colouring, and there is even a third period in this narrative, which is in full colour, and that is Mary’s life with Bryan now. The girls’ stories are happening in different historical backgrounds, but the lack of understanding and respect of fathers to their daughters is equal. This leads, in both situations, to sad and unfortunate young years for the heroines. In the case of Lucia it finishes tragically, but Mary is finding her way out from the depressive situation.

Mary Talbot, on the photo with her husband Bryan Talbot, is the scriptwriter of Dotter of her Father’s Eyes. She was born in Wigan in 1954, in a family with a dominant father, James S. Atherton, a Joycean scholar. Despite her strict father and an unfavourable position of the female gender in her formative years, she managed to become a scholar herself and obtained a PhD in critical discourse analysis from Lancaster University. Following a variety of teaching posts, she became a Reader in Language and Culture at the University of Sunderland in 1997. In recent years, Mary  has intensified her collaboration with her husband Bryan Talbot and they won the 2012 Costa biography prize for Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes.