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 1922 novel Ulysses takes place on a Thursday in 1904.

Ulysses, novel by Irish writer James Joyce, first published in book form in 1922. The novel is constructed as a modern parallel to Homer’s epic poem Odyssey.

All the action of Ulysses takes place in and immediately around Dublin on a single day (June 16, 1904). The three central characters—Stephen Dedalus (the hero of Joyce’s earlier autobiographical novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man); Leopold Bloom, a Jewish advertising canvasser; and his wife, Molly Bloom, a professional singer—are intended to be modern counterparts of Telemachus, Ulysses (Odysseus), and Penelope, respectively, and the events of the novel loosely parallel the major events in Odysseus’s journey home after the Trojan War.

Although Bloomsday is unrelated to flowers, the blossoming of flowers is usually a celebration of life and beauty.