130 Facts About James Joyce

James Joyce contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of the 20th century.

James Joyce attended the Jesuit Clongowes Wood College in County Kildare, then, briefly, the Christian Brothers-run O'Connell School.

James Joyce briefly worked in Pula and then moved to Trieste in Austria-Hungary, working as an English instructor.

Except for an eight-month stay in Rome working as a correspondence clerk and three visits to Dublin, James Joyce resided there until 1915.

James Joyce started his next major work, Finnegans Wake, in 1923, publishing it sixteen years later in 1939.

James Joyce made a number of trips to Switzerland, frequently seeking treatment for his increasingly severe eye problems and psychological help for his daughter, Lucia.

When France was occupied by Germany during World War II, James Joyce moved back to Zurich in 1940.

James Joyce died there in 1941 after surgery for a perforated ulcer, less than one month before his 59th birthday.

James Joyce was born on 2 February 1882 at 41 Brighton Square, Rathgar, Dublin, Ireland, to John Stanislaus James Joyce and Mary Jane "May".

James Joyce was baptised with the name James Augustine Joyce according to the rites of the Roman Catholic Church in the nearby St Joseph's Church in Terenure on 5 February 1882 by Rev John O'Mulloy.

John Stanislaus James Joyce's family came from Fermoy in County Cork, where they owned a small salt and lime works.

The James Joyce family's purported ancestor, Sean Mor Seoighe was a stonemason from Connemara.

James Joyce's father was appointed rate collector by Dublin Corporation in 1887.

James Joyce was attacked by a dog around this time, leading to his lifelong fear of dogs.

James Joyce later developed a fear of thunderstorms, which he acquired through a superstitious aunt who had described them as a sign of God's wrath.

In 1891, nine-year-old James Joyce wrote the poem "Et Tu, Healy" on the death of Charles Stewart Parnell that his father printed and distributed to friends.

The poem expressed the sentiments of the elder James Joyce, who was angry at Parnell's apparent betrayal by the Irish Catholic Church, the Irish Parliamentary Party, and the British Liberal Party that resulted in a collaborative failure to secure Irish Home Rule in the British Parliament.

John James Joyce's name was published in Stubbs' Gazette, a blacklist of debtors and bankrupts, in November 1891, and he was temporarily suspended from work.

James Joyce began his education in 1888 at Clongowes Wood College, a Jesuit boarding school near Clane, County Kildare, but had to leave in 1891 when his father could no longer pay the fees.

James Joyce studied at home and briefly attended the Christian Brothers O'Connell School on North Richmond Street, Dublin.

James Joyce spent five years at Belvedere, his intellectual formation guided by the principles of Jesuit education laid down in the Ratio Studiorum.

James Joyce displayed his writing talent by winning first place for English composition in his final two years before graduating in 1898.

James Joyce enrolled at University College in 1898 to study English, French and Italian.

James Joyce participated in many of Dublin's theatrical and literary circles.

James Joyce protested against nostalgic Irish populism and argued for an outward-looking, cosmopolitan literature.

James Joyce graduated from the Royal University of Ireland in October 1902.

James Joyce considered studying medicine and began attending lectures at the Catholic University Medical School in Dublin.

James Joyce frequently wrote home claiming ill health due to the water, the cold weather, and his change of diet, appealing for money his family could ill-afford.

James Joyce would tend to her, reading aloud from drafts that would eventually be worked into his unfinished novel Stephen Hero.

John James Joyce's drinking and abusiveness increased in the months following her death, and the family began to fall apart.

James Joyce's life began to change when he met Nora Barnacle on 10 June 1904.

James Joyce was a twenty-year-old woman from Galway city, who was working in Dublin as a chambermaid.

James Joyce was picked up and dusted off by an acquaintance of his father's, Alfred H Hunter, who took him into his home to tend to his injuries.

James Joyce was a talented tenor and explored becoming a musical performer.

James Joyce paid the entry fee by pawning some of his books.

James Joyce did well with the first two, but when he was told he had to sight read the third, he refused.

Palmieri even offered to give James Joyce free singing lessons afterwards.

James Joyce refused the lessons, but kept singing in Dublin concerts that year.

James Joyce then reworked it into a fictional novel of his youth that he called Stephen Hero that he labored over for years but eventually abandoned.

James Joyce wrote a satirical poem called "The Holy Office", which parodied William Butler Yeats's poem "To Ireland in the Coming Times" and once more mocked the Irish Literary Revival.

James Joyce wrote the collection of poems Chamber Music at this time; which was rejected.

James Joyce did publish three poems, one in Dana and two in The Speaker, and George William Russell published three of Joyce's short stories in the Irish Homestead.

In September 1904, James Joyce was having difficulties finding a place to live and moved into a Martello tower near Dublin, which Gogarty was renting.

James Joyce had been informed through an agent in England that there was a vacancy at the Berlitz Language School there, but when he arrived there was no position.

James Joyce soon became close friends with Alessandro Francini Bruni, the director of the school at Pola, and his wife Clothilde.

James Joyce completed a short story for Dubliners, "Clay", and worked on his novel Stephen Hero.

When 23 year-old James Joyce first moved to Trieste in March 1905, he immediately started teaching English at the Berlitz school.

James Joyce completed 24 chapters of Stephen Hero and all but the final story of Dubliners.

Richards and James Joyce went back and forth trying to find a solution where the book could avoid legal liability while preserving James Joyce's sense of artistic integrity.

James Joyce became concerned that the book might damage his publishing house's reputation and eventually backed down from his agreement.

James Joyce completed Dubliners, reworked Stephen Hero into A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, wrote his only published play Exiles, and decided to make Ulysses a full-length novel as he created his notes and jottings for the work.

James Joyce worked out the characters of Leopold and Molly Bloom in Trieste.

Artifoni took over the school but let James Joyce know that he could only afford to keep one brother on.

Tired of Trieste and discouraged that he could not get a publisher for Dubliners, James Joyce found an advertisement for a correspondence clerk in a Roman bank that paid twice his current salary.

James Joyce felt he accomplished very little during his brief stay in Rome, but it had a large impact on his writing.

James Joyce's stay in the city was one of his inspirations for Exiles.

Nonetheless, James Joyce was dissatisfied with his job, had exhausted his finances, and realised he would need additional support when he learned Nora was pregnant again.

James Joyce returned to Trieste in March 1907, but was unable to find full-time work.

James Joyce went back to being an English instructor, working part time for Berlitz and giving private lessons.

James Joyce learned much of what he knew about Judaism from him.

James Joyce helped Joyce financially by commissioning him to write for the newspaper.

James Joyce quickly produced three articles aimed toward the Italian irredentists in Trieste.

James Joyce indirectly paralleled their desire for independence from Austria-Hungary with the struggle of the Irish from British rule.

James Joyce earned additional money by giving a series of lectures on Ireland and the arts at Trieste's Universita Popolare.

James Joyce reworked Stephen Hero as the more concise and interior A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

James Joyce had been looking for an English publisher for Dubliners but was unable to find one, so he submitted it to a Dublin publisher, Maunsel and Company, owned by George Roberts.

In July 1909, James Joyce received a year's advance payment from one of his students and returned to Ireland to introduce Giorgio to both sides of the family.

James Joyce unsuccessfully applied for the position of Chair of Italian at his alma mater, which had become University College Dublin.

James Joyce met with Roberts, who seemed positive about publishing the Dubliners.

James Joyce only stayed in Trieste for a month, as he almost immediately came upon the idea of starting a cinema in Dublin, which unlike Trieste had none.

James Joyce returned to Trieste in January 1910 with another sister, Eileen.

From 1910 to 1912, James Joyce still lacked a reliable income.

James Joyce performed very well on the qualification tests, but was denied because Italy did not recognise his degree from an Irish university.

Roberts had the printed sheets destroyed, though James Joyce was able to obtain a copy of the proof sheets.

When James Joyce returned to Trieste, he wrote an invective against Roberts, "Gas from a Burner".

James Joyce's fortunes changed for the better in 1913 when Richards agreed to publish Dubliners.

Pound became James Joyce's promoter, helping ensure that James Joyce's works were both published and publicized.

James Joyce completed A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by 1914; resumed Exiles, completing it in 1915; started the novelette Giacomo Joyce, which he eventually abandoned; and began drafting Ulysses.

In May 1915, Italy declared war on Austria-Hungary, and less than a month later James Joyce took his family to Zurich in neutral Switzerland.

James Joyce arrived in Zurich as a double exile: he was an Irishman with a British passport and a Triestine on parole from Austria-Hungary.

Between 1917 and the beginning of 1919, James Joyce was financially secure and lived quite well; the family sometimes stayed in Locarno in the Italian-speaking region of Switzerland.

James Joyce often used the time spent with them as material for Ulysses.

James Joyce made the acquaintance of the writer Stefan Zweig, who organised the premiere of Exiles in Munich in August 1919.

James Joyce became aware of Dada, which was coming into its own at the Cabaret Voltaire.

James Joyce met Ferruccio Busoni, staged music with Otto Luening, and learned music theory from Philipp Jarnach.

Much of what James Joyce learned about musical notation and counterpoint found its way into Ulysses, particularly the "Sirens" section.

James Joyce avoided public discussion of the war's politics and maintained a strict neutrality.

James Joyce made few comments about the 1916 Easter Rising in Ireland; although he was sympathetic to the Irish independence movement, he disagreed with its violence.

James Joyce stayed intently focused on Ulysses and the ongoing struggle to get his work published.

James Joyce co-founded an acting company, the English Players, and became its business manager.

James Joyce was pitched to the British government as a contribution to the war effort, and mainly staged works by Irish playwrights, such as Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, and John Millington Synge.

For Synge's Riders to the Sea, Nora played a principal role and James Joyce sang offstage, which he did again when Robert Browning's In a Balcony was staged.

James Joyce hoped the company would eventually stage his play, Exiles, but his participation in the English Players declined in the wake of the Great Influenza epidemic of 1918, though the company continued until 1920.

Henry Wilfred Carr, a wounded war veteran and British consul, accused James Joyce of underpaying him for his role in The Importance of Being Earnest.

In October 1919, James Joyce's family moved back to Trieste, but it had changed.

Eight months after his return, James Joyce went to Sirmione, Italy, to meet Pound, who made arrangements for him to move to Paris.

Beach quickly became an important person in James Joyce's life, providing financial support, and becoming one of James Joyce's publishers.

James Joyce met Valery Larbaud, who championed James Joyce's works to the French and supervised the French translation of Ulysses.

James Joyce finished writing Ulysses near the end of 1921, but had difficulties getting it published.

James Joyce had books mailed to people in Paris and the United States who had subscribed to get a copy; Weaver mailed books from Beach's plates to subscribers in England.

In 1923, James Joyce began his next work, an experimental novel that eventually became Finnegans Wake.

At first, James Joyce called it Work in Progress, which was the name Ford Madox Ford used in April 1924 when he published its "Mamalujo" episode in his magazine, The Transatlantic Review.

James Joyce publicly revealed the novel's title as Finnegans Wake in 1939, the same year he completed it.

James Joyce had over a dozen eye operations, but his vision severely declined.

James Joyce even had all of his teeth removed because of infection.

In 1930, James Joyce began thinking of establishing a residence in London once more, primarily to assure that Giorgio, who had just married Helen Fleischmann, would have his inheritance secured under British law.

James Joyce moved to London, obtained a long-term lease on a flat, registered on the electoral roll, and became liable for jury service.

James Joyce stayed in London for at least six months to establish his residency, but abandoned his flat and returned to Paris later in the year when Lucia showed signs of mental illness.

James Joyce planned to return, but never did and later became disaffected with England.

In later years, James Joyce lived in Paris but frequently travelled to Switzerland for eye surgery or for treatment for Lucia, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia.

Jung suggested that she and her father were two people going into a river, except that James Joyce was diving and Lucia was falling.

On 11 January 1941, James Joyce underwent surgery in Zurich for a perforated duodenal ulcer.

James Joyce's body was buried in the Fluntern Cemetery in Zurich.

James Joyce had been a subject of the United Kingdom all of his life, and only the British consul attended the funeral.

James Joyce is buried by his side, as is their son Giorgio, who died in 1976.

James Joyce attended socialist meetings and expressed an individualist view influenced by Benjamin Tucker's philosophy and Oscar Wilde's essay "The Soul of Man Under Socialism".

James Joyce described his opinions as "those of a socialist artist".

James Joyce remained sympathetic to individualism and critical toward coercive ideologies such as nationalism.

James Joyce's politics is reflected in his attitude toward his British passport.

James Joyce wrote about the negative effects of English occupation in Ireland and was sympathetic to the attempts of the Irish to free themselves from it.

However, throughout his life, James Joyce refused to exchange his British passport for an Irish one.

James Joyce has been compared to the medieval, who left their discipline but not their cultural heritage of thought.

James Joyce holds up a mirror to that identity as a first step in the spiritual liberation of Ireland.

Some hints of the techniques James Joyce frequently employed in later works, such as stream of consciousness, interior monologue, and references to a character's psychic reality rather than to his external surroundings are evident throughout this novel.

James Joyce structured each chapter to refer to an individual episode in Homer's Odyssey, as well as a specific colour, a particular art or science, and a bodily organ.

James Joyce played down the mythic correspondences by eliminating the chapter titles so the work could be read independently of its Homeric structure.

James Joyce claimed that if Dublin were to be destroyed in some catastrophe, it could be rebuilt using his work as a model.

The metaphysics of Giordano Bruno of Nola, who James Joyce had read in his youth, plays an important role in Finnegans Wake, as it provides the framework for how the identities of the characters interplay and are transformed.

James Joyce's innovations extend beyond English literature: his writing has been an inspiration for Latin American writers, and Finnegans Wake has become one of the key texts for French post-structuralism.

The open-ended form of James Joyce's novels keep them open to constant reinterpretation.