James Joyce was an Irish writer. He lived for sixty-nine years, from 1882-1941, and wrote many books. Some of his most famous books were Ulysses, Finnegan Wake, and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. He was in poverty and obscurity until 1922, when he wrote Ulysseys. Ulysseys made him one of the most celebrated Novelists of the 20th Century.Finnegans Wake is probably Joyce's best work.
Joyce was born in Dublin, and lived most of his life outside of Ireland. He wrote all of his books about his native home. He lived in many areas, including Paris, Rome, Trieste, and Zurich but returned there only two times. He returned in in 1909 and 1912. Most of his life he was almost blind because of a painful eye disease. Several operations were useless in helping his vision.
His first major book was called Dubliners which was a collection of short stories that reflected on his concern with life among the Irish lower middle class. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a autobiography like book, as Joyce appears as the character Stephen Dedalus. Stephen goes through many different things that Joyce also had to deal with.
In 1922, Joyce wrote the book Ulysses, an epic novel. Ulysses is based on the Greek epic poem "Odyssey". The main character, Leopold Bloom, suffers ridicule because of his religion, Judaism, and has other problems along the way.
In 1939 he published probably his best book, Finnegans Wake. What Joyce did for this book was portray one family and at the same time portrays all families, at all periods of time.
Joyce is one of the greatest writers ever, and one of his greatest accomplishments was the Stream of Consciousness form of writing.
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