1882-1941 Major Works: Dubliners, 1914; A Portrait of the Artist as A Young Man, 1916; Ulysses, 1922; Finnegans Wake, 1939
			James Augustine Joyce was born in Dublin on February 2, 1882, the first of fifteen children to John and May Murray Joyce. Being the first he was of his father's high opinion and was sent to Clongowes Wood College, a Jesuit institution that gave him his highly religious background. Forced to leave Clongowes because of finances, James then attended Belvedere College, another Jesuit school, this time rejecting religion and piety for irreligion and a dedication to art. He then attended University College, Dublin where he took his degree in languages in 1902. Joyce attempted medical school, first in Dublin, then in Paris but was called home from Paris when his mother was dying in 1903. He remained in Dublin until 1904 when he left for the continent to teach English with a young woman from Galway named Nora Barnacle. From 1904 to 1920 they moved frequently between Pola, Trieste, Rome, and Zurich, with three trips to Dublin for James. Nora bore James a son, Giorgio, and a daughter, Lucia, during these years of unsettlement. During this time Joyce wrote his collection of poetry Chamber Music, a book of short stories Dubliners, and an autobiographical novel called Stephen Hero he later transformed in to A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. In 1914 he began working on his novel Ulysses, occupying his next seven years. In 1920, under the influence of Ezra Pound, Joyce and his family moved to Paris, where they would live for the next nineteen years.  In Paris James met Sylvia Beach whose bookstore, Shakespeare and Co., agreed to publish Ulysses and did so in 1922. The book was met with critical acclaim but at the same time charged for obscenity and banned in England and the United States. Joyce's notoriety continued and many were interested in his next work begun in 1923, which was known at the time as Work in Progress. The family had many problems at the time: Joyce's supporters lost faith in his new seemingly unintelligible work; his eyes, which had been going bad since Zurich, were troubling him more and more, forcing him into operation after operation, leaving him practically blind; his daughter Lucia was showing signs of schizophrenia that eventually led to her hospitalization. In 1931, Joyce's father died in Dublin, which was relieved by the birth of his grandson in early 1932. Painstakingly, Joyce continued on Work in Progress until 1938 when he announced its completion. He was presented with a copy of it for his fifty-seventh birthday: it bore the name he had kept secret for sixteen years, Finnegans Wake. The outbreak of the war forced Joyce out of Paris in 1939. He left for unoccupied France, then for Zurich in December of 1940. On January 10, 1941, Joyce had emergency surgery for a perforated ulcer. His condition seemed to improve but on January 12 he slipped into a coma and early in the morning of the thirteenth he died. He was buried January 15, 1941 in Zurich.
		“The vigor of the creative human spirit is embodied in the person and artist of James Joyce. Curiosity, questioning, and awe constitute the foundation of our relationship which has, at many times, been quite painful. But studying Joyce in depth has taught me more about the world and forced me to scrutinize the state of humanity more than any class I have ever been a part of: He continues to be the most humane of all my instructors.” —Andrew Gaub
					Andrew Gaub Email