James Joyce

Biography
Author Biography
• James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (Feb. 2, 1882, in Rathgard, a Dublin
suburb).
• Oldest of 8 children. Catholic family.
• Parents: John Stanislaus Joyce and Mary Jane Murray Joyce: musical
talent; from father: a talent for playing with words and telling stories.
• John Joyce liked to drink and spend money: gradual impoverishment
and forces (nearly 20) changes of address; Joyce knew all quarters of
Dublin.
• Attended Jesuit schools (outstanding student).
• BA in Modern Languages from University College, Dublin.
• While at college wrote an article about Henrik Ibsen: notoriety
• Met other writers (W.B. Yeats)
• To achieve objectivity about his city, he self-exiled.
• Paris (study medicine?): published reviews in the Dublin Daily
Express.
• Return to Dublin because his mother was dying (August 1903, at age
44).
• Joyce stayed in Dublin for 2 years: writing, singing, teaching at a boys’
school.
• Met Nora Barnacle (from rural Galway).
• Both move to Trieste (Italy): language teacher.
• Lived in the continent except for two short visits to Ireland: to start a
failed cinema business and to visit Galway.
• Chamber Music (1907).
• Dubliners (1904; 1907; 1914): profane language, real names and
places.
• Stephen Hero revised into A Portrait of the Artist as a Youn Man
(1916).
• Ulysses (1914-21; pub. 1922).
• Finnegans Wake (17 years; pub. 1939).
• German invasion of France in 1940; Joyce and family moved to Zurich;
died in 1941.