February 2, 1882 - January 13, 1941

"When I die, Dublin will be written in my heart."

~ James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was born in Rathgar, Dublin, Ireland. 

~ He was the eldest son of John Stanislaus Joyce, a rate collector, and Mary Jane Joyce. 

~ Of the fifteen children in the family, only ten survived infancy.

~ In 1884, Joyce was sent to Clongowes Wood College. He returned home only for holidays.

~ At the age of 9, Joyce wrote a verse broadside about the death of Irish political leader Charles Stewart Parnell. This was his first printed work. No copy survives. 

~ Joyce's father lost his job, and Joyce did not return to school. 

~ In 1893, Fr. John Conmee arranged for James to be admitted free with his brother to Belvedere College. He made excellent grades.

~ The Joyce family moved around a lot due to John's inability to keep a job. 

~ Joyce wrote a play called My Brilliant Career. William Archer read the play and rejected it. 

~ Joyce translated two plays by Hauptmann and submitted them to the theater in Dublin. The plays were rejected. 

~ Another rejection, “The Day of Rabblement,” he printed at his own expense. 

~ In 1899, James broke away from his Catholic upbringing. He refused to join a protest against the heresy of Yeat’s Countess Cathleen. 

~ After receiving his degree in 1902, Joyce considered going to medical school in Dublin, but decided to study in Paris instead. He planned to be both a doctor and a writer. 

~ In Paris, he quickly abandoned his medical studies, and lived the life of a Bohemian student.

~ Joyce obtained a position as a teacher at the Clifton School, Dalkey.

~ He sang at several musical festivals, but failed to win because he could not read music at sight. 

~ Opposed to marriage and unable to live openly with his love Nora in Dublin, he decided to live elsewhere. 

~ Upon arriving with Nora in Zurich he found that his teacher position at the Berlitz School was not available, and he proceeded to Pola to teach English at the Berlitz School there.

~ During 1904 his first published poems and stories appeared.

~ Joyce did not get along with his publishers. The submission of the manuscript of Dubliners to Grant Richards started a contentious correspondence over the book. 

~ In July 1910 Maunsel & Co. grew fearful of the candor of Dubliners, and postponed publication. 

~ In 1912 Joyce made his last trip to Ireland. He was unable to persuade Maunsel & Co. to publish Dubliners and the printer broke up the type.  

~ Later on, Grant Richards would agree to publish it.

~ James Joyce had severe eye trouble. He had his first eye surgery in 1917. 

~ The Little Review began to publish Ulysses in serial form, completing half the book by September 1920.

~ In 1920 the Joyce family moved to Paris. In October the Society for the Suppression of Vice lodged a complaint against The Little Review  for publishing certain passages of Ulysses. 

~ During 1927 Joyce, in a fit of depression over Finnegans Wake and his friends’ comments on it, considered abandoning the book. 

~ On December 6, 1933, Judge John M. Woolsey issued his famous decision, ruling that Ulysses was not pornographic and making possible its American publication.

~ In February of the following year, Ulysses was published in New York. 

~ Joyce died at 2 am in Schwesterhaus vom Roten Kreuz in Zurich, as a result of a perforated ulcer.