James Joyce

Dubliners is a collection of fifteen short stories by James Joyce, first published in 1914. They form a naturalistic depiction of Irish middle class life in and around Dublin in the early years of the 20th century.
The stories were written when Irish nationalism was at its peak, and a search for a national identity and purpose was raging; at a crossroads of history and culture, Ireland was jolted by various converging ideas and influences. They centre on Joyce's idea of an epiphany: a moment where a character experiences a life-changing self-understanding or illumination, and the idea of paralysis where Joyce felt Irish nationalism stagnated cultural progression, placing Dublin at the heart of this regressive movement. Many of the characters in Dubliners later appear in minor roles in Joyce's novel Ulysses. The initial stories in the collection are narrated by child protagonists, and as the stories continue, they deal with the lives and concerns of progressively older people. This is in line with Joyce's tripartite division of the collection into childhood, adolescence and maturity.
Table of contents :
The Sisters
An Encounter
Araby
Eveline
After the Race
Two Gallants
The Boarding House
A Little Cloud
Counterparts
Clay
A Painful Case
Ivy Day in the Committee Room
A Mother
Grace
The Dead

1882-1941. Born in Dublin, Ireland, into a family of ten children, Joyce showed singular intelligence and a gift for writing from an early age. After leaving University College Dublin with a degree in modern languages, Joyce emigrated to Europe, living in Italy, Zurich and Paris. A string of short stories, including Dubliners, were followed by his first novel, Portrait of an Artist in 1916, and then the controversial but very successful Ulysses in 1922, a work in which he perfected his stream-of-consciousness style and made his name as a great literary figure. Joyce died in Zurich in 1941, two years after the publication of Finnegans Wake, his long-awaited follow up novel which earned him further honours.