James joyce biography timeline

Irish novelist and poet (1882–1941)

This article is about the writer. For other people with the same name, see James Joyce (disambiguation).

James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernistavant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of the 20th century. Joyce's novel Ulysses (1922) is a landmark in which the episodes of Homer's Odyssey are paralleled in a variety of literary styles, particularly stream of consciousness. Other well-known works are the short-story collection Dubliners (1914), and the novels A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) and Finnegans Wake (1939). His other writings include three books of poetry, a play, letters, and occasional journalism.

Joyce was born in Dublin into a middle-class family. He attended the Jesuit Clongowes Wood College in County Kildare, then, briefly, the Christian Brothers–run O'Connell School. Despite the chaotic family life imposed by his father's unpredictable finances, he excelled at the Jesuit Belvedere College and graduated from University College Dublin in 1902. In 1904, he met his future wife, Nora Barnacle, and they moved to mainland Europe. He briefly worked in Pola and then moved to Trieste in Austria-Hungary, working as an English instructor. Except for an eight-month stay in Rome working as a correspondence clerk and three visits to Dublin, Joyce lived there until 1915. In Trieste, he published his book of poems Chamber Music and his short story collection Dubliners, and began serially publishing A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in the English magazine The Egoist. During most of World War I, Joyce lived in Zurich, Switzerland, and worked on Ulysses. After the war, he briefly returned to Trieste and in 1920 moved to Paris, which was his primary residence until 1940.

Ulysses was first published in Paris

1882. James Joyce was born in Dublin, the eldest of ten children. His father was a rather improvident tax collector. The family became progressively impoverished.

1888. He was educated in Jesuit schools, with emphasis on Catholic and scholastic doctrine. [These establishments were also renowned for their intellectual rigour.] Joyce was a talented student, especially good at languages. He moved from being devout to bitterly anti-Catholic. These experiences were later used as material for his autobiographical novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

1893. Enters Belvedere College, a Jesuit boys’ day school – fees having been waived because of family’s needy circumstances.

1894. Joyce reads Lamb’s Adventures of Ulysses and writes theme on Ulysses as ‘my favourite hero’.

1897. Wins prize for best English composition in Ireland for his age group.

1898. Studies languages at University College, Dublin. Rebels against Church, Family, and the State. Begins to read Ibsen. Active campaigner for freedom of expression and equality for women.

1902 Leaves university to study medicine in Paris, but gives it up and writes reviews for newspapers.

1904. Back in Dublin following his mother’s death, Joyce meets Nora Barnacle on June 10, subsequently to be known as ‘Bloomsday’ and used as temporal setting for Ulysses. Opposed to marriage, but unable to live together because of moral climate at that time, they move to Trieste and live there for the next ten years. Joyce earns a precarious living teaching English at the Berlitz School of Languages.

1905. Joyce writing stories which are later collected as Dubliners, and Stephen Hero, a novel based on his own early life. Supported by his brother Stanislaus.

James Joyce is an acclaimed biography, considered by many to be the definitive account of Joyce’s life and work. Richard Ellmann has a sympathe

James Augustine Joyce [JAJ] b. 6.00 a.m., 2 Feb. (Candlemas), 41 Brighton Square West, Rathgar, Dublin, and bapt. in Catholic religion; son of John Stanislaus Joyce [JSJ], of reputedly Anglo-Norman descent, claiming kinship with O’Connell through his paternal grandmother, and of Mary Jane (“May”) Joyce, née Murray;

JSJ a rates-collector attached to Dublin Corporation, moves to 1 Martello Tce., Bray, a good address in a fashionable new suburb at easy train-ride distance from Dublin city; as eldest son, Joyce enjoys advantages of a upper-middle class childhood;

JAJ enters Clongowes Wood, a boarding-school run by the Jesuit Fathers for the better-off Catholic boys in Ireland; distinguishes himself as a gifted student and faces down Fr James Daly (Dolan in A Portrait) over broken glasses;

JAJ writes “Et Tu Healy” following the death of Parnell (7 Oct. 1891), a poem expressing strong attachment to the doomed Irish Home Rule leader who died after being rejected by the Irish clergy in the wake of his affair with Kitty O’Shea;

Joyces move to “Leoville” at Carysfort Ave., Blackrock; JAJ comes home from school and does not return in the new term, his father having fallen under censure in his working life; Christmas dinner events in A Portrait possibly at this address (if not in Bray the year before);

JSJ loses post in Corporation with pension; family moves to 14 Fitzgibbon St. in the Dublin’s “inner city”, adjac. to Mountjoy Sq. (NE corner); JAJ briefly attends Christian Brothers’ School at N. Richmond St. before being taken free of charge by Jesuits at Belvedere College after his father fortuitously meets Fr. Conmee;

JAJ wins £20 prize in Intermediate Examinations, summer 1894; reads Charles Lamb’s The Adventures of Ulysses as part of Syllabus; Joyce family moves to Millbourne Avenue, Drumcondra; JSJ se

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The Life of James Joyce