James Joyce and Dublin: Dubliners and Ulysses

James Joyce set nearly all his fiction in the Dublin of his youth. This page introduces his work and links to Dubliners, Ulysses and an essay on his life.

Joyce’s Dublin

James Joyce was born in Rathgar, Dublin, in 1882 and left Ireland in 1904, spending most of his adult life in Trieste, Paris and Zurich, where he died in 1941. Although he lived abroad, Dublin remained the setting of almost all his work. Dubliners, his collection of fifteen short stories, was published in 1914 after years of difficulty with publishers. The stories move from childhood to adult and public life, and the collection closes with “The Dead”, set at the Morkan sisters’ annual dance on Usher’s Island.

Ulysses, first published in Paris in 1922, follows Stephen Dedalus, Leopold Bloom and Molly Bloom through a single day in the city, 16 June 1904. That date is now celebrated each year as Bloomsday, with readings and walks that retrace scenes from the novel, from the Martello tower at Sandycove to Bloom’s home in Eccles Street. Both books are reproduced on this site from Project Gutenberg texts.

Further reading on the site

The essay James Joyce - his life and works by Bob Williams gives a fuller account of his background and writing. Readers interested in the streets Joyce describes can turn to Dublin Street Names, Dated and Explained, and the Book list covers the site’s other full-length texts. Note that English As We Speak It in Ireland is by a different author, the scholar P.W. Joyce.

The heading and images recovered from the 2008 page follow below.

Designed by D.J. Brophy, 2008

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