Dubliners / A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man / Chamber Music

by James Joyce

James Joyce is indisputably one of the most original and influential writers of the twentieth century. His first three works--never before collected in one volume--present Joyce at his most accessible. His writing from this period in his career is polished yet marvelously lyrical. These beautifully expressive works illustrate an Irishman's mastery of the English language, reflecting the Irish culture's love for words as well as its unique identity.

Genres: Fiction, Classics, Literature, Ireland, Poetry, Collections, Irish Literature

428 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

James Joyce was an Irish novelist, poet, and a pivotal figure in 20th-century modernist literature, renowned for his highly experimental approach to language and narrative structure, particularly his pioneering mastery and popularization of the stream-of-consciousness technique. Born into a middle-class Catholic family in the Rathgar suburb of Dublin in 1882, Joyce spent the majority of his adult life in self-imposed exile across continental Europe—living in Trieste, Zurich, and Paris—yet his entire, meticulous body of work remained obsessively and comprehensively focused on the minutiae of his native city, making Dublin both the meticulously detailed setting and a central, inescapable character in his literary universe. His work is consistently characterized by its technical complexity, rich literary allusion, intricate symbolism, and an unflinching examination of the spectrum of human consciousness. Joyce began his published career with Dubliners (1914), a collection of fifteen short stories offering a naturalistic, often stark, depiction of middle-class Irish life and the moral and spiritual paralysis he observed in its inhabitants, concluding each story with a moment of crucial, sudden self-understanding he termed an "epiphany." This collection was followed by the highly autobiographical novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), a Bildungsroman that meticulously chronicled the intellectual and artistic awakening of its protagonist, Stephen Dedalus, who would become Joyce's recurring alter ego and intellectual stand-in throughout his major works.
His magnum opus, Ulysses (1922), is universally regarded as a landmark work of fiction that fundamentally revolutionized the novel form. It compressed the events of a single, ordinary day—June 16, 1904, a date now globally celebrated by literary enthusiasts as "Bloomsday"—into a sprawling, epic narrative that structurally and symbolically paralleled Homer's Odyssey, using a dazzling array of distinct styles and linguistic invention across its eighteen episodes to explore the lives of Leopold Bloom, his wife Molly Bloom, and Stephen Dedalus in hyper-minute detail. The novel's explicit content and innovative, challenging structure led to its initial banning for obscenity in the United States and the United Kingdom, turning Joyce into a cause célèbre for artistic freedom and the boundaries of literary expression. His final, most challenging work, Finnegans Wake (1939), pushed the boundaries of language and conventional narrative even further, employing a dense, dream-like prose filled with multilingual puns, invented portmanteau words, and layered allusions that continues to divide and challenge readers and scholars to this day. A dedicated polyglot who reportedly learned several languages, including Norwegian simply to read Ibsen in the original, Joyce approached the English language not as a fixed entity with rigid rules, but as a malleable medium capable of infinite reinvention and expression. His personal life was marked by an unwavering dedication to his literary craft, a complex, devoted relationship with his wife Nora Barnacle, and chronic, debilitating eye problems that necessitated numerous painful surgeries throughout his life, sometimes forcing him to write with crayons on large white paper. Despite these severe physical ailments and financial struggles, his singular literary vision remained sharp, focused, and profoundly revolutionary. Joyce passed away in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1941, shortly after undergoing one of his many eye operations. Today, he is widely regarded as perhaps the most significant and challenging writer of the 20th century. His immense, complex legacy is robustly maintained by global academic study and institutions such as the James Joyce Centre in Dublin, which ensures his complex, demanding, and utterly brilliant work endures, inviting new generations of readers to explore the very essence of what it means to be hum

Reviews

[NK · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book took a long time to read
because it deserves time. Not a quick read. I liked most but not all
of Dubliners. I liked both Portrait of
the Artist and the poem Chamber Music. It's a lot of work to read these stories
based on their complexity and use
of language not typical of current
times.

[Shelby · Rating 3 out of 5]

In high school, I read Joyce's work, and never could fully appreciate it. So, I reread it this winter and discovered what an incredible writer he is, and how masterful he really is with words and sentence structure. I don't think I could write an entire book in a stream of conciousness like that.

[Isabel Rebecca · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every story is painfully real and fills me with nostalgia for lives I’ve never lived. Some are cuter than others. Some are sadder than others. I loved them all. Plus in my opinion it seems like he got carried away with each story he wrote because they become weirder and Longer

[Danna]

Now reading "Counterparts" from Dubliners, a so far brilliant James Joyce collection of short stories, followed by his first novel and lyrical poetry.

[Lilia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Joyce is an excellent writer but this (did not read "portrait of the artist..." Or poems at end) was a little too ordinary and drab for me. I did like the last few pages of "the dead," very much.

[Judi · Rating 2 out of 5]

I enjoyed the short stories in Dubliners. I found A Portrait, long, drawn out and not easy to read. The poems of Chamber Music were good.

[Chad · Rating 3 out of 5]

a little to slow for my likings - but was interesting

[Leo McCarthy]

Brilliant, like most all Joyce's books