James Augustine Joyce [JAJ] b. 6.00 a.m., 2 Feb. (Candlemas), 41 Brighton Square West, Rathgar, Dublin, and bapt. in Catholic religion; son of John Stanislaus Joyce [JSJ], of reputedly Anglo-Norman descent, claiming kinship with O’Connell through his paternal grandmother, and of Mary Jane (“May”) Joyce, née Murray;

JSJ a rates-collector attached to Dublin Corporation, moves to 1 Martello Tce., Bray, a good address in a fashionable new suburb at easy train-ride distance from Dublin city; as eldest son, Joyce enjoys advantages of a upper-middle class childhood;

JAJ enters Clongowes Wood, a boarding-school run by the Jesuit Fathers for the better-off Catholic boys in Ireland; distinguishes himself as a gifted student and faces down Fr James Daly (Dolan in A Portrait) over broken glasses;

JAJ writes “Et Tu Healy” following the death of Parnell (7 Oct. 1891), a poem expressing strong attachment to the doomed Irish Home Rule leader who died after being rejected by the Irish clergy in the wake of his affair with Kitty O’Shea;

Joyces move to “Leoville” at Carysfort Ave., Blackrock; JAJ comes home from school and does not return in the new term, his father having fallen under censure in his working life; Christmas dinner events in A Portrait possibly at this address (if not in Bray the year before);

JSJ loses post in Corporation with pension; family moves to 14 Fitzgibbon St. in the Dublin’s “inner city”, adjac. to Mountjoy Sq. (NE corner); JAJ briefly attends Christian Brothers’ School at N. Richmond St. before being taken free of charge by Jesuits at Belvedere College after his father fortuitously meets Fr. Conmee;

JAJ wins £20 prize in Intermediate Examinations, summer 1894; reads Charles Lamb’s The Adventures of Ulysses as part of Syllabus; Joyce family moves to Millbourne Avenue, Drumcondra; JSJ sells off remaining property in Cork, bringing JAJ to that city with him;

JAJ Intermediate Prize of £20 for three years; offered and refuses a place with Dominicans nr. Dublin; develops interest in romantic poetry of Lord Byron and novels of Dumas; elected to Sodality of Blessed Virgin at Belvedere; JAJ prevents his father’s violent attack on his mother;

Joyces moves to 13 N. Richmond St., where JAJ has ‘spanking match’ with the slavey (the last maid the family will have); moves to 29 Windsor Ave., Fairview later in the year; JAJ hears ‘hellfire’ sermon at Belvedere and is appt. Prefect of Sodality of Mary;

JAJ grows friendly with the Sheehys - school contemporaries - and acts in school play; takes a prize of £30 for 2 years in state examinations and graduates from school; makes Sunday evening visits to the home of David Sheehy (Nat. M.P.) and his family, 2 Belvedere Place;

JAJ has sex with a prostitute, confessing afterwards in the Carmelite Church; commences Matriculation for Royal University (UCD); reads non-curricular authors incl. Meredith, Hardy and Shaw; encounters the works of Henrik Ibsen in ‘moment of radiant simultaneity’ [SH];

JAJ attends W. B. Yeats’s The Countess Cathleen and refuses to join nationalist protest against it; commences reading in the National Library; writes a review of Munkacsy’s painting “Ecce Homo”; makes contact with the Fortnightly Review; family moves to 13 Richmond Ave., Fairview, sharing the house with the Hughes family;

JAJ delivers “Drama and Life” (10 Jan.), lecture at Literary and Historical Soc. [fam. L & H] in UCD; “Ibsen’s New Drama”, his review of When We Dead Awaken appears in Fortnightly Review (1 April 1900); visits London with his father; receives message of thanks from Ibsen through Wm. Archer; travels to Mullingar with JSJ; writes A Brilliant Career - 4 act play on doctor facing epidemic; panned in letter from Archer;

JAJ learns Norwegian and writes to Ibsen (March 1901); translates Hauptmann’s Vor Sonnenaufgang [Before Sunrise]; publishes “The Day of the Rabblement” (14 Oct. 1901) charging the Irish Literary Theatre with provincialism (‘property of the rabblement of the most belated race in Europe&146;; writes the first of his ‘epiphanies’, using an intensely realist technique;

JAJ writes Dream Stuff, a verse drama, and translates Hauptmann’s Michael Kramer; gives paper on Mangan at L. & H. (1 Feb. 1902); meets George Russell and Yeats (JJ to WBY: ‘You are too old for me to help you’); reads at Marsh’s Library; graduates from UCD; travels to Paris with unviable plan of studying medicine there; returns home for Christmas;

JAJ goes back to Paris; reads Aristotle in Bibliothèque Ste. Génèvieve; begins aesthetic journal (“Paris Notebook”); meets J. M. Synge and criticises Riders to the Sea for Aristotelian failings; writes book-reviews for Daily Express; received telegram: “Mother dying come home father”, 13 April; suffers death of May Joyce, 13 Aug.;

JAJ begins to ‘drink riotously’ and freqents brothels; writes “Portrait Essay” (7 January 1904); makes collection of poems (Chamber Music); contributes 3 stories to Irish Homestead [later pub. in Dubliners]; stays with Gogarty at Sandycove Martello; meets Nora Barnacle, 10 June; goes out with her, 16 June; leaves Ireland with her, 8 Oct.; travels to Paris and Trieste in search of teaching job;

JAJ takes English-teaching post in Pola (Yugoslavia); works on Stephen Hero (autobiographical novel); returns to Trieste on invitation of Almidano Artifoni (Berlitz dir.), March; prints copies of “The Holy Office” for circulation in Dublin; Giorgio, a son, b. July; 3 new stories rejected by Irish Homestead; JAJ sends 12 Dubliners stories to London publisher Grant Richards (3 Dec. 1905); Stanislaus leaves Dublin for Trieste, 15 Oct.;

Richards agrees to publish Dubliners, 7 Feb.; his printer refuses to print word ‘bloody’ (in “Two Gallants”) causing Richards to repudiate the contract with JAJ; offers Chamber Music to Elkin Mathews (London); JAJ takes bank-job in Rome and travels there, end of July; quits bank and turns to teaching instead, Nov.; plans new Dubliners story based on Mr. Hunter;

Elkin Mathews accepts Chamber Music, Jan. (pub. May); JAJ quits Roman bank, Feb.; mugged on last night, losing salary in cash; receives recriminatory letter from JSJ; return to Trieste with family, March; Dubliners rejected by several publishers; JAJ writes on Ireland for Piccola della Serra (Trieste) and gives 3 lectures at Università del Popolo; suffers rheumatic fever and enters Ospedale Civico, mid-July; Lucia, a daughter, born 26 July, in charity ward of same; JAJ completes “The Dead” during convalescence (6 Sept); Mathews refuses to publish Dubliners;

Maunsel & Co. show interest in Dubliners, Feb.; JAJ continues to hope for London publisher; briefly renounces drink for Nora, Feb.; translates Synge’s Riders to the Sea into Italian; Nora suffers a miscarriage, without regret; JAJ contemplates singing career and takes professional singing lessons (which remained unpaid); plans to import Irish tweed to Trieste; commences wholesale revision of Stephen Hero as A Portrait in 5 chaps., completing Chap. 3 in Nov. 1908;

JAJ sends Dubliners to Maunsel, April; visits Dublin with Giorgio and signs contract with Joseph Hone (prop. Maunsel), Aug.; takes Giorgio to Galway; Vincent Cosgrave claims he had intimacy with Nora in 1904; JAJ exchanges abject and erotic letters with Nora; travels to Galway with Giorgio, 26 Aug.; returns to Trieste with his sister Eva, 13 Sept.; returns to Dublin to open the Volta cinema for two Triestino businessmen, arriving 20 Oct.; writes erotic letters to Nora; the “Volta” opens in Dublin, 20 Dec.;

JAJ returns to Trieste with sister Eileen, 2 Jan.; suffers serious damage to eye while lying out in drinking bout; required to make changes to Dubliners by Roberts, and agrees, March; the “Volta” sold with 49% losses, July; Stanislaus moves out of the Joyce apartment after a quarrel over money; JAJ threatens George Roberts of Maunsel with exposure and legal action, July; Roberts agrees on date of publication for Dubliners for 20 Jan. following, Dec.;

Roberts objects to “Ivy Day” in Dubliners; JAJ purportedly throws the Portrait manuscript into the fire (rescued by Eileen); Eva becomes homesick and returns to Dublin, July; JAJ writes to Sinn Féin and the Northern Whig exposing Maunsels’ dealings with him, Aug-Sept.; JAJ encourages Nora to accept the attentions of Roberto Preziosa but later publicly assails Preziosa;

JAJ gives lectures on Defoe and Blake (“Realism and Idealism”) at Università (Trieste); sits teachers’ exam in Padua and scores highly, 24-26 April; Dublin BA degree not recognised; JAJ allows Nora to travel to Ireland, July, and follows her after with Giorgio on not hearing promptly; argues for Dubliners with Maunsel and gets 1 set of galleys ‘by a ruse’; leaves Dublin, Sept.;

JAJ publishes “Gas from a Burner”; Dubliners rejected again by Elkin Mathews, April; JAJ has mild affair with Amalia Popper and writes Giacomo Joyce; prepares notes for Exiles, dated Nov.; receives letter from Grant Richards, 25 Nov., renewing queries about Dubliners; receives introductory letter from Ezra Pound, dated 15 Dec.; Yeats finds a poem by JAJ and gives it to Pound (“I hear an army charging upon the land” - printed in Des Imagistes/The Imagists, 1914); Pound enquires about his other writings;

JAJ completes revision of A Portrait, Chap. 1, and sends it with Dubliners to Pound, mid. Jan.; Grant Richards responds to JAJ’s letter about Dubliners and agrees to publish, 29 Jan.; A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man serialised in The Egoist (2 Feb. 1914-1 Aug. 1914); JAJ commences work on Ulysses March 1, 1914; Richards publishes Dubliners as book, 15 June 1914; JAJ sends third chapter of A Portrait to Pound, late July; resumes delivery of Portrait chapters, Nov.;

Stanislaus interned, Jan., JAJ untouched by Italian govt. at outbreak of war; Joyces receive Swiss visas on undertaking to remain ‘non-combatant’; Italians declare war, May; Joyces leave for Switzerland, Zurich, 30 June; JAJ receives support from Royal Literary Fund, July 1915; A Portrait rejected by Martin Secker (London); Eileen marries Frantisek Schaurek, a bank-clerk; final episode of A Portrait reaches Pound July/Aug. 1915 and appears in Egoist, 1 Sept 1915;

Joyces settle in Zurich, living chiefly at 73 Seefeldstrasse; JAJ receives weekly support from Society of Authors at Pound’s suggestion, and later a Civil List grant, Aug.; Exiles rejected by The Stage Society, July; A Portrait published by Ben Huebsch in New York, 30 Dec. 1916; also Dubliners, using Richards’ sheets;

A Portrait published in London by The Egoist Press, 12 Jan. 1917, using Huebsch’s sheets; JAJ suffers attack of glaucoma, Feb.-March; receives £50 quarterly support from ‘anon. admirer’ (Harriet Shaw Weaver), 22 Feb.; JAJ undergoes first of 10 eye operations 18 Aug., and recuperates at Locarno after nervous collapse;

JAJ returns to Zurich, Jan.; receives 1,000 francs a month from Edith Rockefeller MacCormick; Ulysses appears serially in The Little Review, NY (March 1918-Dec. 1920); forms English Players with Claud Sykes and produces Importance of Being Earnest; engages in law suit British Consul employee, April; Exiles published by Richards, May; wins first suit against Carr, 15 Oct.; engages in flirtation with Marthe Fleischmann, mistress of Zurich businessman; the Schaureks return to Trieste;

JAJ loses second suit against Carr, 11 Feb., and issued open letter, April; Fleischmann enters asylum, 2 Feb.; JAJ receives £5,000 capital form Miss Weaver; Exiles published by Huebsch, 7 Aug., and produced as Verbannte in Munich, Aug.; funds from Mrs McCormick stopped; JAJ meets Frank Budgen; Joyces return to Trieste, mid-Oct. 1919;

Joyces briefly settles back in Trieste (staying with Eileen and her husband); Stanislaus resumes position at commercial high school, now Trieste University; JAJ meets Pound at Sirmione, 8 June; Joyces move to Paris on Pound’s suggestion, 8 July; JAJ meets Sylvia Beach of Shakespeare & Co. (rue de l’Odéon), 11 July; Beach offers to publish Ulysses, April; JAJ gains support of leading French critic Valèry Larbaud;

Little Review ceases printing Ulysses after obscenity charge is upheld in New York court, Feb.; JAJ meets Arthur Power, who keeps record of his conversation, and Stuart Gilbert, who prepares a book on Ulysses; Larbaud identifies ‘monologue intérieur’ at public lecture in Adrienne Monnier’s bookshop (also rue de l’Odéon), 7 Dec. 1921;

Ulysses published in Paris by Shakespeare & Co., 2 Feb. 1922; Nora visits Galway against JAJ’s wishes, 1 April, and comes under fire in Irish Civil War; JAJ suffers acute iritis; Nora agrees to read some of Ulysses; Joyces travel to London, meeting Miss Weaver; JAJ has eyes drained by leaches, Nov.;

JAJ begins “Work in Progress” [later Finnegans Wake] with “King Roderick O’Conor” episode, 10 March; JAJ has 3 eye-related operations (entailing removal of all teeth), 3, 15 & 28 April; Joyces visit London and Bognor Regis; JAJ receives further £12,000 capital from Miss Weaver;

JAJ indignant at John Quinn’s sale of Ulysses MS to . W. B. Rosenbach, for £2,000; “Work in Progress” extract published in transatlantic review (April 1924); selection of Ulysses in French appears in Commerce (Summer 1924); JAJ undergoes further eye operations, 10 June & 29 Nov.; JAJ commissions Patrick Tuohy paints portrait of JAJ, May 1924; visits Brittany;

JAJ undergoes eye operation, 15 April; fragment of “Work in Progress” appears in Criterion (July 1925); Criterion printer refuses “Anna Livia Plurabelle”, which Joyce offers to Navire d’Argent (pub. 1 Oct.); Joyces travel to Fécamp, Normandy; returns to Paris and settles into 2 Square Robiac; further eye operations, 8 & 12 Dec.;

“Work in Progress” extract in This Quarter (1925/26); Stanislaus visits Paris and dismisses “Work in Progress”; Joyces travel to Antwerp, Ghent and Brussels, and visits Waterloo; Joyce organises campaign against Samuel Roth, who pirated Ulysses in America; undergoes eye operation, June; Pound writes to JAJ disparaging “Work in Progress” as ‘circumambient peripherisation’, Nov.;

“Work in Progress” espoused by Eugene Jolas, as principal example of ‘revolution of the word’ and printed in transition (April-Nov. 1927 & Nov. 1929, and more intermittently up to April-May 1938); Pomes Penyeach issued by Shakespeare & Co., 7 July; JAJ attacked by Wyndham in Time and Western Man;

JAJ suffers inflammation of the intestine; receives injections of arsenic and phosphorus in his eyes; Stanislaus m. Nellie Lichtensteiger, Aug.; Joyces travel to Salzburg; Anna Livia Plurabelle published in New York, Oct.; JAJ suggests the James Stephens finishes “Work in Progress” if he goes blind;

Nora undergoes hysterectomy; Ulysses published in French (Feb.); JAJ undergoes eye operations; Tales Told of Shem and Shaun published by Black Sun Press (Aug.); JAJ records “Anna Livia Plurabelle” for gramaphone in London; Exagmination (on “Work in Progress”) published, May; invites James Stephens to finish “Work in Progress”; starts campaign for John O’Sullivan, Irish tenor, Nov.;

JAJ vetoes Carl Jung’s introduction to German trans. of Ulysses; JAJ makes friends with Paul Léon; Herbert Gorman begins biography of JAJ; Sylvia Beach surrenders world rights in Ulysses at JAJ’s insistence; undergoes eye operation, May (Prof. Alfred Vogt at Zurich); Giorgio m. Helen Kastor Fleischman, 10 Dec.;

Joyces establish residence in London and legally married at Kensington Registry Office, 4 July (for ‘testimentary reasons’); O’Sullivan campaign peters out; Faber issues Haveth Childers Everywhere; Lucia shows early signs of mental illness; Joyces visit Wales; death of JSJ, 29 Dec.;

Lucia becomes engaged to Alex Ponisovsky, falls into catatonic state, and is diagnosed ‘hebephrenic’; Faber issues Tales Told of Shem and Shaun (Dec.); JAJ refuses Yeats’s invitation to join Irish Academy of Letters, Oct.; JAJ buys Lucia fur-coat for 4,000 frs as therapy; Stephen Joyce, son of Giorgio and Helen, b. 15 Feb.;

Joyces travel to Zurich via Monte Carlo and Neuchâtel in auto of René Bailly (m. to Galway friend of Nora), April 1934; Lucia examined by pschiatrist at Zurich Mental Asylum and placed in Nyon nursing home, July; Max L. Ernst challenges American ban on Ulysses in US District Court, Dec.; Judge John M. Woolsey finds for Ernst (‘somewhat emetic [but] nowhere ... aphrodisiac’), 6 Dec; JAJ employs Mme. France Raphael to recover unused material from Ulysses notebooks, 1933-34;

America edition of Ulysses published (Feb.), selling 33,000 copies in 2 months; Lucia physically attacks her mother and is returned to nursing home; Servire Press issues The Mime of Mick Nick and the Maggies (The Hague, June 1934) with art-work by Lucia; Lucia sets room on fire, 15 Sept.; sent to Zurich Asylum, and then to nursing-home where Carl Kung holds position; George travels to America to pursue singing career;

Lucia is placed in care of Miss Weaver in London, then taken Bray in Ireland with Eileen; runs away from Eileen; placed in Co. Dublin nursing-home; cared for by Miss Weaver and a nurse in London, and then in Paris by Maria Jolas; regarded as ‘dangerous’ and placed in Asylum; moved to maison de santé, remaining in care for the rest of her life; Sylvia Beach about to sell MS of Stephen Hero, 1935;

A Chaucer ABC with drawings by Lucia published, July; Joyces visit Villers-sur-mer (Calvados), Copenhagen, Bonn and Zurich; JAJ writes letter-story to Stephen which woul become The Cat and the Devil (10 Aug. 1936; NY 1964); Ulysses published by John Lane in London (Bodley Head Edn. Oct. 1936); Stanislaus officially expelled from Trieste; JAJ and Stanislaus meet in Zurich;

JAJ works Italian trans. of Anna Livia Plurabelle with on Nino Frank; JAJ invited to PEN Club dinner as guest of honour and addresses meeting on author’s rights, June; makes weekly visits to Lucia; George and Helen Fleischmann travel to America, Dec.-April;

JAJ composed last sections of Finnegans Wake with great difficulty due to eye-sight; involved with arrangements to evacuation Lucia in case of war (deferred by Munich Agreement, 30 Sept.);

JAJ sents wreathe to funeral of Yeats; Finnegans Wake published (4 May 1939); JAJ travels to Zurich for eye-treatment, and then to Pornichet, nr. Baule (Normandy) where Lucia is being evacuated, Sept.; Helen Joyce has nervous breakdown presaging collapse of her marriage to Giorgio; Stephen Joyce sent to Maria Jolas’ school at St Gérand-le-Puy nr. Vichy, and joined by the Joyces at Christmas, 24 Dec.;

Joyces, Léons, Beckett and others gather at St Gérand-le-Puy as Paris falls to the Germans (May 1940); Joyces take rooms in hotels at St. Gérand and Vichy (mid-April to mid-June); gained visas to Switzerland with great difficulty and much international support; first application rejected, 30 Sept; visa granted, 29 Nov.; Joyce, Nora, George & Stephen depart night of 14-15 Dec. reaching Zurich by train, 17 Dec. 1940;

JAJ suffers extreme attack of abdominal pain and removed to Red Cross Hospital, 10 Jan.; operated on for duodenal ulcer, 12 Jan.; wakes but loses strength, asking for wife and son before slipping into coma; and dies 2.15 a.m. 13 Jan.; buried at Fluntern Cemetery, Zurich, 15 Jan.;

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