A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

<p><b>''<i>A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man</i> begins with one of the most arresting opening sentences in literature'' Patrick McGuinness, from his Preface.</b><br><br><i>A Portrait</i> first appeared in instalments in the modernist magazine <i>The Egoist</i> in 1914, before it came out as a book in 1916, the year of the Easter Rising against British rule in Ireland. An autobiographical ''coming of age'' story, <i>A Portrait </i>is Joyce''s first novel. Many elements of Joyce''s own life - his Catholic schooling, his family circumstances and his father''s financial difficulties, as well as his sexual, political and artistic awakenings - are fictionalized and in it he skilfully extend the English language, as it opens with a child''s voice rendered by a third-person narrator, and closes with the mature Stephen''s first-person reflections.</p>