The Irish Writers: James Joyce

Irish novelist, short-story writer and poet, James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (1882–1941) is regarded as one of the greatest, most innovative literary talents of the twentieth century. Joyce revolutionised the structure of the modern novel. Chamber Music (1907), Dubliners (1914) and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1914–15) were widely acclaimed. His seminal work Ulysses (1922) provoked violent reactions. Its explicitness, groundbreaking interior monologues and complex references were heralded as genius by some but deemed obscene by others. In Finnegan’s Wake (1939) he stretched language to its very limits, combining portmanteau words with the stream of consciousness narrative established in Ulysses, in a difficult style that still never lost sight of comedy and lyricism. This biography, by the author David Pritchard, is a frank and accessible presentation of the life and work of an unconventional man and writer. Joyce left a legacy that has shaped the novel as we know it and has never been matched.