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About Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet considered to be one of the most influential writers of the 20th century.
Born in Dublin, Ireland on February 2, 1882 to John Stanislaus Joyce and Mary Jane "May" Murray, Joyce was the oldest of ten siblings.
Despite a somewhat chaotic family life characterised by financial insecurity, he received a good education at Clongowes Wood College (1888 - 1891) then Belvedere College (1893 - 1898) and finally studying modern languages, with Latin and logic at University College Dublin (1898 - 1903), where the library is named for him.
An avid reader and a talented writer, Joyce began publishing poems and short stories in local literary magazines while still a student.
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Joyce left Ireland for Paris, but was forced to return to Dublin a year later due to a lack of funds. In 1904, he met Nora Barnacle, a chambermaid, and the two fell in love. They soon left together for the Continent and would never return, except for shorts stints. They had two children, Giorgio and Lucia, and were together until Joyce's death in 1941.
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In 1914, Joyce published his first major work, the semi-autobiographical novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. The novel was well-received and established Joyce as a promising new talent in the world of literature. He followed it with Dubliners, a collection of short stories published in 1916.
Ulysses, Joyce's most famous work, was published on February 2nd, 1922, on Joyce's 40th birthday. Considered a masterpiece of modernist literature, it follows the lives of a group of characters in Dublin over the course of a single day. When first published, the novel was illegal to sell, advertise or import in Ireland, the UK, America and beyond. It was deemed scandalous. Thankfully with the unwavering support of his wife, Nora, and help from friends such as Sylvia Beach, Harriet Weaver, Adrienne Monnier, W.B. Yeats, T.S. Eliot, Ford Madox Ford, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Edith Rockefeller and many others, he managed to stay the course, and the prohibitions were eventually overturned. Ulysses eventually became a commercial and critical success, and cemented Joyce's reputation as one of the greatest writers of his time.
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After the publication of Ulysses, Joyce and his family stayed in Paris for many more years. He continued to write and publish, and in 1939, completed his final work, Finnegans Wake, a highly experimental novel that remains one of the most challenging works of literature ever written. The family remained in Paris until 1940, when they escaped Nazi occupied France for Switzerland.
Joyce died in 1941 at the age of 59. He is buried in Fluntern Cemetery in Zurich.
