James Joyce

Born in Dublin in the throes of Ireland’s fight for independence from England, James Joyce was steeped in Irish patriotism during his formative years. His father, an abusive alcoholic, was staunchly anti-English, and his stint as an election worker likely influenced Joyce’s “Ivy Day in the Committee Room.” Joyce had a typical classical education, run by Jesuits, full of Catholic theology and heavily focused on ancient Greek and Roman literature. Young Joyce hated school but absorbed the classical texts and theological culture like a sponge. Sick of Dublin, he left home young and would return very few times in his life—never with joy—preferring continental cities like Paris and Trieste. As an expatriate, he struggled to support his wife and children. He taught English but, as a writer, he kept his literary standards high, producing only challenging, cutting-edge (and not necessarily commercial) fiction. His autobiographical novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1914-15), and his story collection Dubliners (1914), in which “Ivy Day” appears, both provide an embittered take on his hometown in a high realist style. Never smart with money but full of self-confidence, Joyce relied in later years on literary patrons who recognized his immense talent. His long novel Ulysses (1922), which follows two Dubliners over the course of a single day, was championed by fellow writers like Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot, and was pushed to completion by a shrewd bookseller in Paris. Controversial at the time for its frank depiction of sex, Ulysses soon became—and remains—regarded by many as the greatest novel in English. Joyce’s menacingly difficult magnum opus Finnegans Wake (1939), over which he labored for 17 years with a young Samuel Beckett as secretary and moral supporter, is one of the most creative and poetic commentaries ever produced on the way humans use language. These last two books continue to obsess and confound scholars; they have secured Joyce’s reputation as one of the most creative novelists in history and an essential leader of the Modernist movement.