The Dublin Daily Express was a daily newspaper with a strong unionist readership. The paper described itself as, ‘read daily and exclusively by the most influential people in this country, and by the class that also represents the greatest purchasing power’. It was known to be popular with the landed gentry and the Protestant clergy. It ceased publishing in 1917 and was absorbed into a sister publication, the Evening Mail. Among its many contributors was James Joyce. Joyce wrote 20 book reviews including one for Poets and Dreamers: Studies and Translations from the Irish by Lady Gregory in March 1903. Joyce described the book as, ‘This book, like so many other books of our time, is in part picturesque and in part an indirect or direct utterance of the central belief of Ireland.’

In 1916, the Dublin Daily Express, was one of four daily newspapers in Dublin. It came out against the rebellion and condemned the support for Sinn Féin. During Easter Week, the newspaper premises was seized by the Irish Volunteers. On 9 May 1916, a reporter recounted the recapture of the building on Parliament Street by the British Army. He described the moment the British Army forced their way into the building, ‘In a trice the door was forced, and for a brief space one stationed, as the writer was, at the corner of Crane Lane, could hear the exultant shouts of the inrushing soldiers, above the inferno of reeking rifles. What the scene of desperation and bloodshed within must have been can be better imagined than described.’