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

James Joyce (1882 - 1941) was born in Dublin, Ireland, to a well-meaning but financially inept father and a solemn, pious mother. One of the most revered writers of the 20th century, he was noted for his experimental use of language in his works. His first publication, an essay on Ibsen's play, appeared in the Fortnightly Review in 1900. In 1904, he made his first attempt at a novel, Stephen Hero and also attempted to publish A Portrait of the Artist, an essay-story dealing with aesthetics, only to have it rejected. At the outset of the First World War, Joyce moved to Zurich, where he wrote Exiles, reworked on the early chapters of Ulysses and published A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in a serial form. It appeared in twenty-five instalments in The Egoist. Almost a complete rewrite of the abandoned Stephen Hero, it is heavily autobiographical incorporating the techniques of stream of consciousness and interior monologue.