James Joyce
Author of Ulysses (1922), the ultimate celebration of his native city, James Joyce - who spent most of his adult life in voluntary exile from Ireland - was born in 1882. After an impoverished childhood, he went to University College, a place of learning then staffed by Jesuit priests, where he led a dissolute life and began to experiment with writing short pieces of prose which he called "epiphanies". In 1904 he started writing the short stories that were eventually published as Dubliners . On June 10 of that year, Joyce met Nora Barnacle, and, on their next meeting, June 16, he fell in love with her; it's on this day that the entire epic narrative of Ulysses is set. They finally got married some 27 years later. With the exception of two brief visits to Dublin in 1909, when he attempted to set up a chain of cinemas, and a final visit in 1912, Joyce never again lived in Ireland. All the great works, including A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) and his late masterpiece, Finnegans Wake (1939), were written in various European cities - Zurich, Paris, Trieste - where Joyce and his family eked out a penurious existence supported mostly by donations from rich patrons. At the time of Joyce's death in 1941, Ulysses was banned in Ireland, condemned as a pornographic book; it wasn't published in the Republic until the 1960s. Joyce once remarked that he was "more interested in the street names of Dublin than in the riddle of the universe", and boasted that Dublin could be rebuilt from scratch using the information contained in his books. The Bloomsday pilgrimage, held every year on June 16, draws people from all over the world to meet in Dublin where they retrace the action of the novel. It starts at the Martello Tower at Sandycove and progresses through the streets of Dublin, stopping at Davy Byrne's pub where Leopold Bloom's lunch of a glass of burgundy and a gorgonzola-and-mustard sandwich is served, followed by the National Library, the Ormonde Hotel (Ormond Quay, north Dublin) and all the other locations made iconic by this great novel. For serious Joyceans, the James Joyce Centre at 35 North Great Georges St (Tues-Sat 10am-4.30pm, Sun noon-4.30pm; tel 873 1984; GBP2/?2.54), not far from the Irish Writers' Centre, has a museum with documents of his life and work, and an excellent bookshop. The centre also has information on lectures, walking tours, and Bloomsday events.
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