Select Works of James Joyce (6 vols.)

by James Joyce

Publishers:

Elkin Mathews; Grant Richards; B. W. Huebsch; University of Adelaide

and

1 more

, 1907–2012

Overview

James Joyce set the tone for the literature of the twentieth century. His novels Ulysses and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man were named the first and third best English-language novels of the twentieth century by Modern Library. The style, narration, and content of his works defined the Modernist literature movement. His works also inspired work in other fields—philosopher Jacques Derrida, for example, wrote a book on Joyce’s use of language in Ulysses. Whether you want to read them for their own merits or study them for their influence on Western literature, these books are a must.

The digital edition of Joyce’s works is fully indexed and tagged, allowing for near-instant search results. Use the dictionary lookup tool to dig deeper in to Joyce’s novel use of English words. The books are linked with the rest of your library.

Key Features

• All three of Joyce’s novels
• Joyce’s play, short stories, and poems

Product Details

• Title: Select Works of James Joyce
• Author: James Joyce
• Volumes: 6
• Pages: 1,905
• Resource Type: Literature
• Topic: Fiction

Chamber Music

• Author: James Joyce
• Publisher: Elkin Mathews
• Publication Date: 1907
• Pages: 48

Chamber Music is Joyce’s first publication, containing 36 love poems. Though the book did not sell well in its first print run, it received critical acclaim from Ezra Pound and W.B. Yeats.

. . . a technical and emotional masterpiece.

—W.B. Yeats

Dubliners

• Author: James Joyce
• Publisher: Grant Richards
• Publication Date: 1914
• Pages: 278

Dubliners, Joyce’s second work, is a collection of 15 short stories. Written during the peak of the Irish nationalist movement, the stories center on characters from the middle class of Dublin in the early 1900s. In this book, Joyce introduced the idea of an epiphany (appearing), when a character has an extreme self-revelatory moment that leaves them forever changed. The stories begin with children as narrators and slowly move through adolescence into maturity.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

• Author: James Joyce
• Publisher: B.W. Huebsch
• Publication Date: 1916
• Pages: 299

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man was originally serialized in The Egoist from 1914 to 1915. The semi-autobiographical novel recounts the story of Stephen Dedalus, Joyce’s alter-ego, as he rejects his Irish and Catholic identity and makes his way as an artist. The name Stephen Dedalus is a reference to Stephen, the first Christian martyr, and Daedalus, the Greek craftsman who constructed wings for his son, Icarus.

Modern Library lists Portrait as the third-best English-language novel of the twentieth century. It is written in a flow-of-consciousness manner, employing Joyce’s modernist technique. The technique was employed by Joyce in Ulysses and had a profound influence on fiction writing in the twentieth century.

Exiles: A Play in Three Acts

• Author: James Joyce
• Publisher: B.W. Huebsch
• Publication Date: 1918
• Pages: 154

Exiles is a play about a love triangle between a man, his wife, and his best friend. Though there are some autobiographical notes in the characters, it diverts from Joyce’s life in many significant ways. The play is loosely based on the last story in Dubliners, “The Dead.”

Ulysses

• Author: James Joyce
• Publication Date: 1922
• Pages: 470

Ulysses was originally serialized in The Little Review from 1918 to 1920. The story, divided into 18 episodes, follows Leopold Bloom as he travels through Dublin on June 16, 1904. The date is the actual day of Joyce’s first date with his wife. The story corresponds to Homer’s epic Odyssey. The title is the Latin form of Odysseus, the Odyssey’s protagonist.

Modern Library ranked Ulysses as the most important English-language novel of the twentieth century.

Finnegans Wake

• Author: James Joyce
• Publication Date: 1939
• Pages: 656

Sample Pages: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7

Finnegans Wake is Joyce’s final book, written over a 17-year period. Often regarded as the most difficult English work of fiction, the book has a stream-of-consciousness style that takes the form of a dream narrative. The first line of the book is a fragment, which is a continuation of the last line of the book. Thus, the book is a never-ending cycle in itself.

About James Joyce

James Joyce (1882–1941) was born in Dublin. He received his early education at two Jesuit schools, Clongowes and Belvedere. In 1898, he enrolled in University College in Dublin, where he studied English, French, and Latin, graduating in 1902. While at university, Joyce was involved in the theater and literary movements in the city. Following graduation, Joyce moved to Paris to study medicine. When the French lectures proved too difficult to follow, Joyce dropped out and returned to Dublin. Following his mother’s death in 1904, Joyce moved to Zurich and then to Trieste (at the time in Austra-Hungary), where he was a school teacher for 10 years. On the eve of WWI, Joyce moved back to Zurich, where he gained a patron whose support allowed him to focus on writing instead of teaching. In 1920, Joyce moved to Paris until 1940, when he returned to Zurich to escape the Nazis. He died in 1941 after surgery for a perforated colon.