Long Description:James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (Irish Seamus Seoighe; 2 February
1882 – 13 January 1941) was an expatriate Irish writer and poet,
widely considered to be one of the most influential writers of the
20th century. He is best known for his landmark novel Ulysses
(1922). His other major works are the short story collection
Dubliners (1914), the novels A Portrait of the Artist as a Young
Man (1916) and Finnegans Wake (1939).
Although most of his adult life was spent outside the country,
Joyce's Irish experiences are essential to his writings and provide
all of the settings for his fiction and much of their subject
matter. His fictional universe is firmly rooted in Dublin and
reflects his family life and the events and friends (and enemies)
from his school and college days. Due to this, he became both one
of the most cosmopolitan and one of the most local of all the great
English language modernists.
In 1882, James Augustine Joyce was born into a Catholic family
in the Dublin suburbs of Rathgar. He was the eldest of ten
surviving children; two of his siblings died of typhoid.
In 1891, Joyce wrote a poem, "Et Tu Healy," on the death of
Charles Stewart Parnell. His father had it printed and even sent a
copy to the Vatican Library.
James Joyce was initially educated at Clongowes Wood College, a
boarding school in County Kildare, which he entered in 1888 but had
to leave in 1892 when his father could no longer pay the fees.
Joyce then studied at home and briefly at the Christian Brothers
school on North Richmond Street, Dublin, before he was offered a
place in the Jesuits' Dublin school, Belvedere College, in 1893.
The offer was made at least partly in the hope that he would prove
to have a vocation and join the Order. Joyce, however, was to
reject Catholicism by the age of 16, although the philosophy of St.
Thomas Aquinas would remain a strong influence on him throughout
his life.
He enrolled at the recently established University College
Dublin in 1898. He studied modern languages, specifically English,
French and Italian. He also became active in theatrical and
literary circles in the city. His review of Ibsen's New Drama, his
first published work, was published in 1900 and resulted in a
letter of thanks from the Norwegian dramatist himself. Joyce wrote
a number of other articles and at least two plays (since lost)
during this period. Many of the friends he made at University
College Dublin would appear as characters in Joyce's written
works.
After graduating from UCD in 1903, Joyce left for Paris;
ostensibly to study medicine, but in reality he squandered money
his family could ill afford. He returned to Ireland after a few
months, when his mother was diagnosed with cancer. Joyce refused to
pray at her bedside but this seems to have had more to do with
Joyce's agnosticism than antagonism for his mother. After she died
he continued to drink heavily, and conditions at home grew quite
appalling. He scraped a living reviewing books, teaching and
singing.
In 1915 he moved to Zürich in order to avoid the complexities of
living in Austria-Hungary during World War I. It was here where
Ezra Pound brought him to the attention of English feminist and
publisher Harriet Shaw Weaver, who would become Joyce's patron,
providing him thousands of pounds over the next 25 years and
relieving him of the burden of teaching in order to focus on his
writing. Joyce headed to Paris in 1920 at an invitation from Ezra
Pound, supposedly for a week, but he ended up living there for the
next twenty years.
He travelled frequently to Switzerland for eye surgeries and
treatments. In Paris, Maria and Eugene Jolas nursed Joyce during
his long years of writing Finnegans Wake. Were it not for their
unwavering support (along with Harriet Shaw Weaver's constant
financial support), there is a good possibility that his books
might never have been finished or published. In their now legendary
literary magazine "transition," the Jolases published serially
various sections of Joyce's novel under the title Work in Progress.
He returned to Zürich in late 1940, fleeing the Nazi occupation of
France. On 11 January 1941, he underwent surgery for a perforated
ulcer. While at first improved, he relapsed the following day, and
despite several transfusions, fell into a coma. He awoke at 2 a.m.
on 13 January 1941, and asked for a nurse to call his wife and son
before losing consciousness again. They were still en route when he
expired fifteen minutes later. He is buried in the Fluntern
Cemetery within earshot of the lions in the Zürich zoo. His wife
Nora, whom he finally married in London in 1931, survived him by 10
years. She is buried now by his side, as is their son George, who
died in 1976.