A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Dubliners - James Joyce [2]
Joyce had at first conceived Ulysses as a short story, but he expanded it into a novel that he published in installments starting in 1918 and until it was banned for obscenity in 1920. Joyce and his family weathered World War I in Zurich and, after a brief return to Trieste, resettled in Paris in 1920. The full text of Ulysses was published in Paris in 1922, but the book continued to be banned in England and America. Joyce spent the next seventeen years writing Finnegans Wake, which would be published in 1939. The author’s growing literary success during this period eased the family’s financial burdens, but tragedy loomed in the background. Joyce’s vision troubles were acute, and his daughter, Lucia, diagnosed with schizophrenia, suffered a mental breakdown. In 1934 Ulysses was published in the United States, accompanied by a landmark obscenity decision; in 1936 it was published in England. Once again war struck, and Joyce returned to Zurich, where he died on January 13, 1941. James Joyce is widely regarded as among the most important writers of the twentieth century.
THE WORLD OF JAMES JOYCE
1882 James Augustine Aloysius Joyce is born on February 2 in the Dublin suburb of Rathgar to Mary Jane Murray Joyce and John Stanislaus Joyce. Virginia Woolf is born.
1884 Nora Barnacle is born in Galway on March 21. Stanislaus Joyce, James’s brother, is born on December 17.
1887 The Joyce family moves to the seaside town of Bray.
1888 James enters Clongowes Wood College, a Jesuit school known as the Eton of Ireland.
1891 James withdraws from Clongowes because his father can no longer afford the tuition; for the next two years he is informally educated at home. Irish political leader Charles Stewart Parnell dies. James writes the poem “Et Tu, Healy” about Parnell’s betrayal.
1893 James enrolls in a Christian Brothers school. Soon after, he and Stanislaus are admitted, without fees, to Belvedere College, a Jesuit grammar school in Dublin.
1898 Joyce enters University College Dublin, where he studies modern languages. He is influenced by Yeats and Ibsen, and studies Dano-Norwegian in order to read Ibsen’s original work.
1899 Ibsen’s symbolic drama When We Dead Awaken is published.
1900 The Fortnightly Review, in London, publishes “Ibsen’s New Drama,” Joyce’s review of When We Dead Awaken.
1901 At his own expense, Joyce publishes “The Day of the Rabblement,” an essay critical of the parochialism of the Irish Literary Theatre (later to become the Abbey Theatre).
1902 Joyce graduates from University College and leaves Dublin for Paris with the intention of studying medicine.
1903 In April, Joyce returns to Dublin when his mother is diagnosed with cancer; she dies in the summer. Joyce resides for a short time in the Martello Tower at Sandycove.
1904 He has his first date with Nora Barnacle on June 16, a date he went on to memorialize as the setting for his novel Ulysses (1922); with the publication of Ulysses, June 16 will come to be known as Bloomsday. He has begun the autobiographical novel Stephen Hero, which later will become A Portrait of the Arist as a Young Man. He takes time away from working on Stephen Hero to write the first stories in the collection that will become Dubliners. In October, James and Nora leave Dublin and settle in Pola, Austria-Hungary.
1905 Foreigners are expelled from Pola, and the Joyces move to Trieste, Italy, where Joyce works at a Berlitz school. He submits an early version of Dubliners for publication. He meets and tutors then unknown novelist Italo Svevo, whose work he helps to publish. The Joyces’ son, Giorgio, is born on July 27. The Sinn Fein Party is organized in Dublin. George Bernard Shaw’s Mrs. Warren’s Profession opens in New York but is closed by the police censor after one performance.
1906 Joyce moves his family to Rome, where he works in a bank. Although their financial situation improves, Joyce is unhappy, and the family returns