James Joyce Events

1882 Feb 2 James Joyce is Born
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was born on 2 February 1882 to John Stanislaus Joyce and Mary Jane Murray in the Dublin suburb of Rathgar. He was the oldest of ten surviving children; two ...
1898 James Joyce Enrolls at University College Dublin
He enrolled at the recently established University College Dublin (UCD) in 1898, and studied modern languages, specifically English, French and Italian. He also became active in theatrica...
1904 Jun 10 James Joyce Meets Nora Barnacle
The disparate strands of his life found their focus on June 10, 1904, when he met Nora Barnacle. He guessed correctly from her accent that she was Galway, and convinced her to meet him in...
1904 Oct
to 1905 Mar
James Joyce Teaches English at the Berlitz Language School in Pola
Theer are accounts of Joyce's teaching style, if not of its material, and these are as varied as those who report them. Gorman's biography suggests that Joyce was a martyr to his teaching...
1905 Jul 27 James Joyce's Son Giorgio is Born
"She has nobody to talk to but me and, heroics left aside, this is not good for a woman....I do not know what strange and morose creature she will bring forth after all her tears." —James Joyce
1907 Jul 26 James Joyce's Daughter Lucia is Born
The cause of Joyce’s greatest anguish, Lucia was born in Trieste in 1907, the second child of impoverished and (until 1931) unwed parents. With them, she moved to Zurich during the First ...
1909 Dec
to 1910 Jan
James Joyce Manages The Volta Cinematograph, Ireland's First Cinema
Cinema arrived in Dublin in April 1896 when a demonstration was held in Dan Lowery’s Star of Erin theatre (later the Olympia). James Joyce was briefly the manager of the first cinema in t...
1914 Feb 2
to 1915 Sep 1
 'Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man' Appears in 'The Egoist' Magazine
The distinctive characteristic of Joyce’s storytelling is his attempt to represent each stage of the boy’s developing consciousness in the language through which the child himself perceiv...
1914 Jun 15 'Dubliners' Is Published
Troubled by his conscience (a rare trait for any publisher) he now agreed, again, to publish Dubliners, the only condition being Joyce had to buy 120 copies himself and would receive no ...
1918 Mar
to 1920 Dec
'Ulysses' is Serialized in The Little Review
With almost no funds, Anderson, then 28, started The Little Review in Chicago in 1914. Heap joined her in 1916, and they moved the magazine to New York a year later. They published good p...
1918 May 25 'Exiles' is Published
Critics of Joyce have usually paid less attention to this play than to his other work. In the literary career of Joyce, it is both important and highly revealing. It casts light on Joyce'...
1920 James Joyce Meets Ezra Pound
Pound’s aspirations for literature were grand. He believed that bad writing destroyed civilizations and that good writing could save them, and although he was an élitist about what counte...
1921 The Editors of 'The Little Review' Are Fined For Obscenity
In June 1919, the United States Post Office determined that The Little Review was in violation of Postal Laws and Regulations, due primarily to the obscene content of Joyce's work, and re...
1922 Feb 2 The First Edition of 'Ulysses' is Published in Paris
The court claimed the content of Ulysses to be pornographic based on the characters preoccupation with sex and their colorful language. Soon after the ruling, watching a discouraged James...
1922 Mar Ernest Hemingway Meets James Joyce
Hemingway was quick to see the merit in the work of James Joyce, not always a limpid writer. In a letter to Sherwood Anderson dated March 9, 1922, Hemingway wrote: "Joyce has written a...
1927 Jul 7 'Pomes Penyeach' is Published
Published in 1927, Pomes Penyeach is a collection of 13 poems, a gathering of works written while Joyce was busy working on Ulysses. The collection is so named for its price – one shillin...
1931 Jul 4 James Joyce and Nora Barnacle are Married
On 4 July 1931 - a date chosen as his father’s birthday - Joyce married Nora, though offering a circumstantial story of a previous marriage between them entered into Trieste which was for...
1933 'United States v. One Book Called Ulysses' Trial Takes Place
The New York Society for the Suppression of Vice successfully blocked the publication of James Joyce's Ulysses in 1921, citing a relatively tame masturbation scene as proof of obscenity. ...
1934 First Authorized American Printing Of Ulysses
In a landmark decision dated December 6, 1933, Judge John M. Woolsey, United States District Judge, lifted the ban on Ulysses, declaring that "In Ulysses, in spite of its unusual franknes...
1939 Feb 2 'Finnegans Wake' Is Published
Finnegans Wake, Joyce’s final work was created over a period of fifteen years with composition starting in 1923. It was finally completed in 1938. Joyce celebrated its eventual publicatio...
1941 Jan 13 James Joyce Dies
With the death of James Joyce there passes the strangest and most original figure which Ireland gave to Europe in this generation. The ban imposed for years upon his "Ulysses" gave a n...