James Joyce (1882-1941) [1/3]


Chronology
1882 1888 1893 1896 1898 1899 1900 1901 1902 1903 1904 1905 1906 1907 1908 1909
1910 1911 1912 1913 1914 1915 1916 1917 1918 1919 1920 1921 1922 1923 1924 1925
1926 1927 1928 1929 1930 1931 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939 1940 1941

File 1 File 2 File 3
1882-1917 1918-29 1930-41
A Critical Biography of James Joyce by Bruce Stewart
[ Read in this webpage Read in separate page ]
Appendices
Chronology (Life) Family Records Chronology (Works) Schema of Ulysses
[ Each of the above pages will open in a separate window. ]

Addenda
A Critical Biography of James Joyce
The Joyce Family Homes in Paris

Q: Did James Joyce have syphilis?
See Kathleen Ferris in Notes - infra.

A Little Gallery ...
A Portrait Album Shakespeare & Co.

[ See copies & details of The Cat and the Devil / The Cat of Beaugency - here. ]

1882: James Augustine Joyce [JAJ; erroneously given as Augusta on his birth certificate], b. 6.00 a.m., 2 Feb. (Candlemas), 41 Brighton Square West, Rathgar, and bapt. by Rev. John O’Mulloy, 5 Feb. St Joseph’s Chapel of Ease (later Church of St. Joseph’s), Roundtown, Terenure; godf. Philip McCann (orig. of Dundalk; owner of ship’s chandler on Burgh Quay; d.1898 - Mr. Fulham in Stephen Hero); eldest son of John Stanislaus Joyce ([JSJ; 1849-1931; b. Cork] and called by JAJ ‘the silliest man I ever knew’ (letter to Harriet Shaw Weaver [HSW], 1 Jan. 1932), and Mary Jane (“May”) Joyce [née Murray; d.]; the Joyces putatively descended from Thomas de Jorce who arrived in Ireland in 13th c. [i.e., the Norman invasion]; JAJ’s paternal grand-father married Ellen, a 2nd cousin of Daniel O’Connell; JSJ, an only son; JSJ appt. Collector of Rates, Inns Quay and Rotunda Wards, 1880 in return for role in election of Liberal candidates; m. May Murray (1859-1903), 15 May 1880, she being ten years younger; Mrs. Joyce endured fifteen[?] pregnancies, 1881-94, bearing 4 boys and 6 girls with three misbirths [see family]; William O’Connell of Cork (aka Uncle Bill; ‘Uncle Charles’ in A Portrait) joins family for a 6-yr stay, some time after the death of his wife in 1881; also in residence, Mrs. “Dante” Conway (née Hearn; d. 1896), previously a nun in Pennsylvania who left the order on inheriting £48,000 at death of her brs. in the colonies, married a bank employee called Conway, 1875, and became the victim of a large-scale theft of funds by her absconding husband; Joyce family moves to 23 Castlewood Ave., 1884; moves again to 1 Martello Tce., Bray, May, 1887; neighbours. incl. James Noy Vance (a chemist) and family, 4 Martello Tce. (facing); primary ed. at with Eileen [Eleanor] Vance, at Miss Raynor’s kindergarten, Bray; guests there incl. Alf Bergan, Tom Devin, and John Kelly, a convicted Land Leaguer [Fenian], imprisoned under [Political] Crimes Act, during Dec., 1887-Jan. 1888, and friend of Tim Harrington (Lord Mayor); JAJ sings in Bray Boat Club Concert at Edward Breslin’s Hotel (Quinnsborough Rd.) with parents, 26 June 1888, his first public performance;

1888: photographed in sailor suit, aetat. 6, without glasses [Buffalo U. Library Coll.]; JAJ enters Clongowes Wood School, 1 Sept. 1888 (£25 p.a.) under rectorship of Fr. John S. Conmee (‘a bland and courtly humanist’ - as Joyce told Gorman); the youngest boy in the school; experiences homesickness and placed in infirmary under Nanny Galvin; studies Ratio Studiorum of Jesuits liberally adapted to state examinations; faces down Fr. James Daly (Dolan in A Portrait) over broken glasses; makes First Communion, 21 April 1889; takes piano lessons from Edward Haughton, 1889-91; confirmed as Aloysius, [March] 1891; falls ill and moved to Infirmary, Spring 1891; plays imp in Aladdin in school play; Fr. Devitt appt. Rector; JAJ regarded as the most gifted pupil, though showing signs of irreligion; JSJ travels to Cork to canvas tenants’ votes for Parnellites in General Election and incurs reproof from Rates Office, July 1891; JAJ writes “Et Tu Healy”, following death of Parnell (7 Oct. 1891), being printed by his father (at Alley & O’Reilly off Bolton St.), a sent copy to the Vatican (‘Why shouldn’t I remember it? Didn’t I pay for the printing of it, and didn’t I send a copy to the Pope?’ [cited in Flann O’Brien’s apoc. interview]); JAJ comes home from Clongowes, [prob.] to convalesce after illness, Oct.-Nov. 1891 [Ellmann: removed from Clongowes, June 1891]; JAJ and Stanislaus taken to see Danby’s painting “The Opening of the Seventh Seal”, at National Gallery of Ireland; family moves to 23 Carysfort Ave., Blackrock (“Leoville”), after 26 Nov. 1891 (b. of Eva) or beginning of 1892 [note]; Christmas Day dinner-table fracas involving JSJ, John Kelly and Dante, at Martello Tce., 1891 [Ellmann; poss. Carysfort Ave.]; Mrs. Conway leaves household four days after; Uncle Bill returns to Cork, 26 Aug., 1892; JAJ studies at home, independently and with mother’s help; JAJ attempts a novel associates with neighbouring boy Aubrey Raynold; JSJ appears in Stubbs Gazette and is suspended from work, Nov. 1892;

1893: JSJ loses Collector of Rates post,effective 1 Jan. 1893, during a rationalisation when Dublin Corporation wins entitlement to collect own rates; receives pension of £132.2.4 - being half of the two-thirds pension offered to other rate-collectors [poss. secured by personal appeal of Mrs. Joyce since he was first first offered nothing on account of his sullied record]; family moves to 14 Fitzgibbon St. after period lodging at 29 Hardwicke St., winter 1892-93 [not before Oct. 1892]; JAJ briefly attends Christian Brothers [CBS], N. Richmond St., 1892-93; JSJ travels to Cork to sell properties for purposes of repaying Reuben J. Dodd, bringing JAJ with him to that city, Feb. 1893; JSJ & JAJ also visiting Youghal, encountering Philip McCann [his godfather] on the train home; JAJ enters Grammar III Class, in Belvedere College [occupying the house built by George Rochfort, 2nd Earl of Belvedere; 1775], 6 April 1893, through personal kindness of Fr. Conmee, S.J., then Director of Studies under the rectorship of Fr. Wheeler - resulting from a chance meeting between Conmee and JSJ; JAJ gives his energy to weekly essays for Mr. George Dempsey; reads Charles Lamb’s The Adventures of Ulysses as part of the Intermediate Syllabus (Preparatory level); also selections from Ovid and Caesar, English romantic poetry, and poems of Samuel Ferguson; sale of his father’s remaining Cork property, Dec. 1893; death of mat. g.f., 3 March 1894 (of stroke-paralysis); JAJ attends Araby Bazaar at RDS, Ballsbridge, and witnessed returning distressed by W. G. Fallon, 19 May 1894; family moves to Millbourne Avenue, Drumcondra, summer 1894; JAJ wins £20 prize in Intermediate Examinations, June 1894; lends sums to siblings and treats parents to meal at Jammet’s and travels to Glasgow with JSJ, summer 1894; death of John Murray, birth and death of Freddie (18-30 July 1894); JAJ interrupts JSJ’s violent attack on his mother by jumping on his back; Fr. William Henry appt. rector of Belvedere, Sept. 1894; Intermediate Prize of £20 for three years, 1895; JAJ offered and refuses a school place with Dominicans nr. Dublin; defends Byron against Albrecht Connolly (‘Heron’ in AP) and others, in controversy sparked by laureate Alfred Austin’s diatribe against the ‘feminine’ poetry of Morris & Tennyson; writes home-work essay nominating Ulysses as “My Favourite Hero” [c.1895] - as he later told Frank Budgen; admitted by election to Sodality of Blessed Virgin under directorship of Fr. Henry, 7 Dec. 1895;

[ top ]

1896: death of John Kelly, of TB, 13 April & bur. 16 April 1896; Joyce family moves to 13 N. Richmond St. [var. 17], off N. Circular Rd., summer 1896 (new neighbours incl. Boardmans and Long John Clancy); JAJ appt. Sodality Prefect (Praeces), 25 Sept. 1896; engages in ‘spanking match’ with maid servant at home [poss. model for Mary O’Driscoll in Ulysses], resulting in the discharge of the servant after the rector (Fr. Henry) elicits the information from Stanislaus; death of Mrs. Conway, 16 Nov.; writes “Trust Not Appearances”, a school essay of 1896 [now Cornell MS 1]; family moves to 29 Windsor Ave., Fairview, autumn 1896-summer 1899; attends A Royal Divorce with his father, autumn 1896; hears ‘hellfire’ sermon at Belvedere retreat given by Fr. James A. Cullen, 30 Nov. 1896 [corrig. 30 Nov.-3 Sat. Dec. 1898 - during his first year at UCD; modelled on Giovanni Pietro Pinamonti, SJ, 1688]; JAJ undergoes pious reformation, 1897; pens early version of “Matcham’s Masterstroke” for Titbits (later bestowed on Leopold Bloom); writes Silhouettes, prose sketches in first person, and composes poems for collection to be called Moods (c.1898) - both spoken of by Stanislaus, both lost; scores 13 out of 49 placed students in Intermediate, 1897, with prize of £30 for 2 yrs. [£33 in A Portrait, Chap. II]; £3 for best English composition in that grade in Ireland; makes Sunday evening visits to home of David Sheehy and family, 2 Belvedere Place; poss. attraction to Mary, the youngest (m. Tom Kettle); sings humorous songs and English ballads chez Sheehys; reads George Meredith and Thomas Hardy in copies from Capel St. Library, often borrowed for him by Stanislaus; also Shaw’s Quintessence of Ibsenism, and other critics of conventional morality; reads the plays of Ibsen, whom he ‘encounters’ in a moment of ‘radiant simultaneity’ and in whom he finds ‘a spirit of wayward boyish beauty’ (Stephen Hero); sports ivy leaf on the anniversary of Parnell’s death (6 Oct. 1897); purchases a copy of Imitation of Christ (Thomas à Kempis) with Intermediate prize money, 26 Oct. 1897;

1898: death of JAJ’s godfather Philip McCann [Mr Fulham of Stephen Hero], 12 Jan. 1898; offered Jesuit noviciate by Fr. Henry, director of studies at Belvedere, and refuses; plays Dr. Grimstone, headmaster of Crichton, in Anstey’s Vice Versa, affecting Fr. Henry’s manner; refuses to attend bishops’ cathetical examination [err. Catholic studies] as less important and denied permission to sit the Intermediate until his French teacher MacErlaine intercedes; fails to win new exhibition but takes English composition prize of £4, judged by Prof. William Magennis (UCD); encounters prostitute on return from the play Sweet Briar (1898) [Ellmann err. 1896], and prob. frequents prostitutes thereafter; confesses with Carmelite Franciscans, Church Street [ante-dated to school-days for A Portrait]; Intermediate results announced 3 Sept. 1898; JAJ wins £30 for a second year, with £4 for best essay and books to the value of £1; buys Ruskin’s Mornings in Florence with prize money, 9 Sept. 1898; undertakes matriculation course work, Sept. 1898; completes essay on “Force”, 27 Sept. 1898; enters University College, Dublin (Royal University), Oct. 1898, probably with fees paid by bequest from Philip McCann; registers for Modern Languages, mostly subscribed by women (‘the Ladies’ course’: Costello); reads at Capel St. Library, where modern fiction was available; studies English under Thomas Arnold and later Fr. George O’Neill, French under Edouard Cadic (bur. Glasnevin); meets Vincent Cosgrave, shrewd but feckless - the Lynch of Stephen Hero and Ulysses, and and later a suicide in the Thames; also John Francis (“Jeff”) Byrne, the Cranly of Stephen Hero and A Portrait [emig. USA, 1910]; George Clancy - Davin in Portrait; living at Grantham St. (later Mayor of Limerick and shot by Black & Tans in 1921), with whom he engages in mock-duels in M. Cadic’s classroom; Francis Skeffington (pacificist; executed non-judicially by Capt. Colthurst-Bowen during the Easter Rising 1916) - McCann in A Portrait, nickname “Knickerbockers”; also Constantine [C. P.] Curran, and Thomas Kettle [later Chair of Economics, UCD; Nationalist MP, and Redmondite volunteer to British Army; d. France 1916];

Joyce at UCD (academic courses)

1899: JAJ first speaks at UCD Literary & Historical Society (L. & H.), Jan. 1899; elected to Exec. Comm., 18 Feb. 1899; lost narrowly to Louis J. Walsh in election for post of Treasurer, 21 March 1899; attends Sudermann’s Magda, brought to Dublin by Mrs. Campbell, March 1899 and with parents and foretells ‘genius breaking out’ in his own home; compelled by Yeats’s The Countess Cathleen (Antient Concert Rooms, 8 May 1899 [première]), which he watches from the gods’, hearing Florence Farr sing the lyric “Who Goes with Fergus?”, and claps vigorously though surrounded by Irish-Ireland protesters incl. Skeffington, who objected to the representation of the ‘type of our people [as] a loathesome brood of apostates’ in the Freeman’s Journal (10 May 1899); JAJ refuses to sign the student petition-letter objecting to Yeats’s play - but calls it ‘political claptrap’ in speaking with his brother (SJ, My Brother’s Keeper, p.187); family temporarily lodging for summer at Convent Ave., Fairview, 1899 [viz., 225 Richmond Rd.], May 1899; JAJ commences reading in National Library; JAJ writes “Ecce Homo”, an essay [review-article] dated Sept. 1899 on the painting of that title by the Hungarian painter Michael Munkacsy (1844-1900), shown at RHA - poss. intended for Fr. Finlay’s New Ireland Review [MS in Cornell UL]; JAJ makes contact with W. L. Courtney, ed. of Fortnightly Review, early Oct. 1899 (effected by George Dempsey, acc. Eugene Sheehy); family moves to 13 Richmond Ave., Fairview, sharing the big house with Richard Hughes and family, Oct. 1899; JAJ attends trial of Samuel Childs for murder of his br. at Bengal Tce. (Glasnevin), defended by Seymour Bushe, Oct. 1899; 2nd yr at UCD commences [27] Oct. 1899; JAJ choses Italian as optional subject, both to study Dante [whom he prefers to Milton] and avoid the ‘crush’ of French and German; reads Italian as sole student under Fr. Charles Ghezzi, SJ - called Artifoni in SH and Ulysses (“Wandering Rocks” & “Circe”) but Ghezzi in A Portrait - from his Berlitz employer Almidano Artifoni in Trieste]; studied English with Fr. Darlington [Fr. Butt in Stephen Hero - of whom ‘It was in this class that Stephen first made his name’: SH].

[ top ]

1900: completes “Drama and Life”, 10 Jan. (MS Cornell UL), and delivers same after inspection by Fr. Delany, Pres. of UCD, at L. & H., 20 Jan. 1900 (‘That was magnificent, but you’re raving mad!’); informed by Courtney that he could not take his article on When We Dead Awaken, 19 Jan. 1899; attends Martyn’s The Bending of the Bough (Feb. 1900); receives notice of change of plan from Courtney, 4 Feb. 1899, his review-article consequently appearing as “Ibsen’s New Drama” in Fortnightly Review (1 April 1900); received 12 guineas in payment a week later and visits London with his father; contacts Courtney and lunches with William Archer, the translator of Ibsen; weekend of 15 April - JSJ offering unwelcome pro-Boers comments; plays part of villain in student prod. of Cupid’s Confidante (reviewed by J. B. Hall in Freeman’s Journal); learns of Ibsen’s appreciative appraisal of his review (‘velvellig’ in Ibsen’s letter to Archer of 18 April 1900), 28 April 1900 [BL original - as attached]; embarks on learning Norwegian with a view to writing to the master (as he does in March 1901); family moves with the Hughes family [couple] to 8 Royal Tce. [now Inverness Rd.], Fairview, May 1900; JAJ re-elected to L. & H. Committee but loses Auditorship election to Hugh Kennedy (later Chief Justice of Ireland), May 1900; his attendance at public meeting on Irish language in education (“School and the Nation”) recorded in An Claidheamh Soluis, May 1900 - but later told his brother: Quotes: ’If the Irish programme did not insist on the Irish language I suppose I could call my self a nationalist’ (Letters, Vol. 2, p.187; here 51); visits London alone, attends music halls (‘music hall, not poetry, is the criticism of life’) and sees Eleanora Duse in La Gioconda (Lyceum) and La Città Morta, sending her a eulogistic poem; reintroduces himself to Archer (who has to be reminded who he is in a second note) and lunches with him at his club, May 1900; travels to Mullingar with JSJ and Stanislaus to straighten out elector lists at behest of Dublin solicitor, summer 1900; lodging with photographer Shaw, who has a model [like Milly in Ulysses]; reads D’Annunzio’s The Child of Pleaure, and soon after his La Gloria and Sogno da Tramonto Autumno; writes A Brilliant Career, a four-act play set in Mullingar and dealing with young doctor facing epidemic (‘To My Own Soul I dedicate the first true work of my life’; Letters, Vol. II. pp.7-8); sends play to William Archer, 30 Aug. 1900; reading Gerhart Hauptmann; receives a letter of rejection from Archer, 15 Sept. [characters ‘not sufficiently individualised’; ‘too large a subject’: JJ, 79]; family moves to 32 Glengarriff Parade (NCR/Drumcondra), autumn 1900; takes English, French, Italian and Logic for BA Hons., with texts incl. Sweet’s Anglo-Saxon Primer, Byron and Arnold, Dante’s Purgatorio and Tasso’s Gerusalemme Liberata; reading Huysman’s La Bas and Horton’s Book of Images; writes earliest of the “epiphanies”, poss. autumn 1900, at Glengarriff Parade [see Stanislaus Joyce, MBK];

1901: JAJ appears as stereotypical villain, Geoffrey Fortescue in an amateur production of Margaret Sheehy’s Cupid’s Confidante, at X.L. Café on Grafton St., 8 Jan. 1901, and greeted as a ‘revelation of amateur acting’ by the Evening Telegraph [JJ, 1965, p.97]; contemplates stage-career and general sobriquet as “Gordon Brown” (pseud. after Giordano Bruno; MBK, 132); writes letter to Henrik Ibsen in Norwegian (March 1901); reading Col. Olcott’s Theosophical Studies and Tolstoy’s The Fruits of Enlightenment, May 1901; attends Soldality Literary Conference meeting on Canon Sheenhan, 1 June 1901; revisits Mullingar with JSJ, summer 1901; reads D’Annunzio’s The Child of Pleasure (copy signed by Joyce with date <Mullingar July 5, 1900>, held in Yale UL]; trans. Hauptmann’s Vor Sonnenaufgang as Before Sunrise, completing it by 23 July 1901 [MS inscribed Summer, 1901; publ. forthcoming, ed. Sam Slote]; translates Hauptmann’s Michael Kramer, summer 1901; JAJ sends Shine and Dark [named after a line by Whitman] to Archer and is discouraged from publication, Sept. 1901 [‘as yet more temperament than anything else in your work’ [JJ, 1982, 83]; writes the first of his epiphanies (Stanislaus accidentally preserving them by writing his commonplace book on the verso); third year at UCD commences [Oct. 1901]; writes “The Day of the Rabblement”, 14 Oct. 1901, an article protesting against the provincialism of the Irish Literary Theatre on learning in the first issue of Samhain that Casadh an tSugáin (Hyde) and Diarmuid and Grania (Moore/Yeats) were to be staged in the third and final season; the article is refused by St. Stephen’s censor Fr. Henry Browne (patron of Sodality Literary Conference) as including reference to Il Fuoco, at that time on the Vatican index of banned books; “The Day of the Rabblement” self-published by Joyce along with a feminist tract by Francis Sheehy Skeffington, Nov. 1901 (85 copies printed by Gerrard Bros., St. Stephen’s Green; price 2d.); noticed by W. G. Fay in letter United Irishman (2 Nov. 1901), pleading that the Irish Literary Theatre ‘still hopes’ to stage continental drama, thge obstacle being ‘mainly a matter of money’; reading W. M. Adams’s The House of the Hidden Places (on Egyptian religion), works of Mangan, Yeats’s John Sherman, Verlaine’s Les Poètes Maudits, and Fogazzaro’s Piccolo Mondo Antico; JAJ attends John F. Taylor’s rhetorical defence of Irish language, Law Students’s Debating Soc., 24 Oct., 1901;

[ top ]

1902: JAJ writes a second play, Dream Stuff, in verse; gives paper on J. C. Mangan at L & H [Literary and Historical Society], 1 Feb. 1902, afterwards publ. in St Stephen’s, 1:6, May 1902 (pp.116-18); answered in debate by Hugh Kennedy and W. P. Coyne, et al.; br. George contracted typhus [typhoid fever], 13 March, 1902; applies for St Cecilia Medical School, Dublin, April, 1902 [with Cosgrove and another friend of J. F. Byrne (Silent Years, p.76)]; JAJ sings to him his setting of Yeats’s poem, “Who will go drive with Fergus now, / and pierce the deep wood’s woven shade?” (later assoc. with his dying mother in Ulysses); George partially recovers but suffers perforated ulcer on resumption of food but d. 3 May 1902 [aetat. 14; ‘I am very young to die’]; bur. 5 May 1902 [Ellmann var., d. 9 May]; JAJ omits Easter duties, May 1902; walks to home of George Russell (AE) in Garville Ave., Rathgar, 18 August 1902; JAJ appears to have burnt his juvenile works at about this time (summer 1902); JAJ sits BA Hons. exams, 6 Oct. 1902, and grad. BA Arts, Pass, Royal Univ., 30 Oct. 1902 [vide photo. of JAJ in BA gown 31 Oct.1902; Buffalo U. Collection]; JAJ reads Joachim de Fiore [or Abbas da Floris] in the ‘stagnant bay’ of Marsh’s Library, probably inspired by Yeats’s “Tables of the Law”, and signs the visitors’ book for 22-23 Oct. 1902; there examines Vaticinia, siue Prophetiae Abbastis Joachimi [... &c.] (Venice 1589) by the pseudo-Joachim rather than the works indicated by Yeats in that story; JSJ commutes half his pension to buy house at 7 St Peter’s Tce. [now 5, St Peter’s Rd., Cabra], 24 Oct. 1902, the addressed from which he subscribed to “Empire-building” of M. Jacques Labaudy, Emperior of the Sahara; JAJ formally registers at St Cecilia Medical School, Dublin, 2 Oct. 1902, and begins studies Nov. 1902; also makes an application to Faculté de Médecine, Univ. of Paris, 18 Nov. 1902; JAJ dines with Lady Gregory, who also invites John B. Yeats, at Nassau Hotel, 4 Nov. [Yeats’s invitation on her behalf to JAJ of 3 Nov. extant; Slocum Collection at Yale UL]; a meeting with Yeats [WBY] who had returned from London in early October, planned for the Ancient Concert Rooms by Russell but deferred by Joyce, preferring to meet him casually near the National Library; JAJ meets Yeats and walks with him to a café in O’Connell St. [acc. to Yeats], Oct. 1902 [acc. Ellmann, James Joyce] - or early Nov. [and after a diner with Lady Gregory, acc. R. F. Foster, Life of Yeats]; JAJ writes to Lady Gregory (‘I have found no man yet with a faith like mine’) and receives £5; JAJ visits E. V. Longworth (ed. Daily Express), to whom she has written on his behalf; borrows from others before leaving for Paris, 2 Dec. 1902; met by WBY off the Irish Mail [Euston Station] and taken by him to the Academy, the Speaker and to Arthur Symons’s flat, where he formed a good impression; arrives Gare St Lazaire, Paris, 3 Dec., settles at Grand Hôtel Corneille, 5 rue Corneille (Rive Gauche); dines with Dr. Jacques Rivière on intro. of Dr. Maclagan; writes book review for Daily Express (‘dully expressed’, FW500.15-16), from 4 Dec. 1902; though technically ineligible, attends first medical class, Paris Univ., [7] Dec. 1902; review of works of George Meredith and William Rooney (Daily Express, 11 Dec.); visits Joseph Casey (Kevin Egan in Ulysses), a Clerkenwell malefactor and ex-prisoner, now typesetter with New York Herald (Paris Edn.), with his son Patrice, at rue Goutte-d’Or in Montmartre; explores Berlitz teaching (£7.10.0 p.m.) and undertakes to teach Joseph Douce privately (£1 p.m.); mortgage raised on house in Cabra to secure his ticket home; stops over in London, 18-22 Dec.; arrives back in Dublin, 23 Dec. 1902; finds he has alienated Byrne by sending a dog-Latin account of Parisian prostitutes on postcard to Cosgrave simultaneously with another to him containing a poem, 15 Dec. [MBK, 209ff.]; meets Oliver St. John Gogarty at the counter of the National Library (‘gay betrayer’); fails to be appointed Irish Times correspondent;

1903: JAJ departs for Paris again, Jan 17, 1903; visits C. Lewis Hind (ed. Academy) seeking book-reviews on Yeats’s invitation; supplies sample copy of his reviews and is asked for some ‘moments of his spiritual life’; no commission forthcoming and no ‘moments’ given; offered post as Paris correspondent on Men and Women (ed. George R. Sims); stays at Kennington and frequents one Eve Leslie; attends race-course; visits Lady Gregory and an O’Connell cousin (s. of William); reaches Paris, 23 Jan. 1903; secures 6-month admission card [reader’s ticket] to Bibliothèque Nationale, 24 Jan. 1903, reading there in the afternoons; review of Stephen Gwynn, Ireland Today and Tomorrow (Daily Express, 29 Jan.); visits St Cloud suburb on 21st birthday; attends Sarah Bernhardt première, 8 Feb.; reading Ben Jonson alongside Aristotle in St. Hilaire’s trans. in Bibliothèque Ste. Geneviève, in the evenings; commences entries in his “Paris Notebook”, 13 Feb. 1903 [‘Desire is the feeling ...’; &c.; [NLI 36,639/2/a, Gorman, 1939, pp.96-99; also rep. in OCPW]; meets J. M. Synge, a co-resident at Hôtel Corneille, Monday, 6th March [vars. 8th & 9th], and several times after, dining in an economical bistro at St. André des Arts [vide ‘Harsh gargoyle face ... palabras’, in Ulysses]; JAJ criticises Riders to the Sea as insufficiently Aristotelian on receiving typescript from Synge - later borrowing a copy from Sylvia Beach’s shop at his first visit there in 1920; shares picnic trips with Synge to Clamart and Charenton before Synge leaves Paris on 13 March 1903; travels to Nogent, and to Tours, with Chown (Siamese); acquires Les Laurier sont Coupés by Dujardin, at railway kiosk (later identified as the source of parole intèrior/interior monologue); reviews of Ibsen and Lady Gregory’s Poets and Dreamers (Daily Express, 26 March 1903 -untypically over author’s initials; receives fateful telegram: ‘mother dying come home father’; borrows 375 frs. from Douce (repaid by JSJ as £3); leaves Paris for London, 11 April 1903; quarrels with Longworth over a book and suffers explusion from the office - reputedly answering Longworth’s ‘If I stick my head out the window, I can get a hundred young men to review it’, to which Joyce: ‘What, your head?’; attended law classes at UCD; returned to St. Cecilia’s but left again; sought support from Dowden for post at National Library (‘extraordinary [but] quite unsuitable’); contribs. review of a biographical study of Giordano Bruno by J. Lewis McIntyre to Daily Express, 30 Oct. 1903 - having previously read a study by I. Frith (1887); projects a newspaper (The Goblin), and walks 14 miles with Francis Skeffington to Celbridge home of Thomas Hughes Kelly, donor of Padraic Colum’s award, to propose investment of £2,000 in the newspaper, 10 Dec. 1903, only to be refused admission by the porter though later receiving an apology by telegram; appt. sub-editor of The Irish Bee-keeper by its editor Gillies, though actually meant to serve as business-manager of The Goblin, but did not retain post (‘for about twenty-four hours’); suffers the death of his mother, May Joyce, 13 Aug. 1903 [bur. on 26 June 1903 in Ulysses, Bodley Head 1960, p.815] in Ulysses; vide Bodley Head Edn., 1960, p.815]; keeps vigil with his sister Margaret (“Poppie”) for their mother’s ghostly return on the night of her [his mother’s] funeral; with Stanislaus, burns her courtship letters from JSJ [Ellmann, JJ 1984, p.136]; engages in bouts of dissipation in Nighttown (documented by Stanislaus); writes an unprinted letter to Irish Times protesting at treatment of French sailors in N. Africa arising from the colonial venture of Jacques Lebaudy; resumes reviewing for Daily Express but is angrily dismissed by Longworth; begins to ‘drink riotously’ [MBK, 240];

[ top ]

1904 (Jan.-July): JAJ composes “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man”, essay, 7 January 1904, giving an account of the spiritual development of a nameless (but largely autobiographical) hero; rejected by the new magazine Dana; determines to extend the essay into an autobiographical novel, Stephen Hero - resolving on the name on his birthday, 2 Feb., in a kitchen-table conversation with Stanislaus (as recorded by the latter in his Dublin Diary); seeks name of doctor from Gogarty for treatment of venereal infection, March 1904; attends classes in law and medicine; crashes a literary party given by Lady Gregory, and partly-snubs hostess; called ‘a beggar’ by George Moore, who appraises his poetry with the word ‘Symons’; takes singing lessons from Benedetto Palmieri, and rents a room to practice at 60 Shelbourne Rd, home of the McKernans; performs at concert of St Brigid’s Panoramic Choir in presence of Lady [“Daisy”] Fingall, 14 May; also 14 May, publication of his poem “Silently she’s combing” in Saturday Review at instance of Arthur Symons; attends Feis Ceol at Antient Concert Rooms and sings “No Chastening” (Sullivan) and “The Sally Gardens” (Moffat) as set pieces, failing to win First Prize as being unable - or unwilling - to sing from score, 16 May 1904; collects a number of poems into a volume, calling it Chamber Music amid disorderly life with Gogarty - who encourages him to drink; wrote short-list of books on musical history with the names of the Percy Society and the Musical Antiquarian Society in his notebook [“Commonplace”/1903-04], 1904, and a number of titles of contacted Arnold Dolmetsch to inquire about purchasing a lute, in June 1904 [cf. U 16.1763-65]; meets auburn-haired Nora Barnacle (b. Galway 1884 [Barnacle anglic. from Ó Cadhain]; formerly of 4, Bowling Green, Galway) in Nassau St., 10 June 1904 - nr Finn’s Hotel at 1 South Leinster St., where she was then working as a chamber-maid; Nora fails to turn up for date outside Sir William Wilde’s house (1, Merrion Sq.); JAJ’s relationship with Nora cemented while walking out on 16 June 1904 - purportedly at Leahy Rd. in Sandymount, later the scene of Bloom’s masturbatory act in “Nausicaa’ (‘a kind of satisfaction ... the recollection of it fills me with amazed joy’); attends rehearsal of Synge’s Well of the Saints at National Theatre Society premises in Camden Lane, in company with St. John Gogarty, on 20 June - so drunk that he blocked the passage way with his recumbent form [‘Joyce gets drunk in his legs’, acc. Padraic Colum - also the subject of a reference in Synge’s Manchester Guardian article); receives cuts and bruises in an assault on St. Stephen’s Green, with Cosgrave standing by - poss. the original for the Nighttown episode in Ulysses; shows early parts of Stephen Hero to George “AE” Russell, and is invited to write stories for The Irish Homestead, with a request for something ‘simple, rural, live-making, pathos’ [sic, corrig. to pathetic in Ellmann, James Joyce, 1965 Edn., p.169], for payment of £1 in Russell’s letter [‘It is easily earned money if you can write fluently and don’t mind playing to the common understanding for once in a way’]; Russell’s letter is accompanied in print by Berkeley Campbell’s “The Old Watchman” from the same journal by way of an example; Joyce tells Con Curran that he is writing 10 epicleti [epiclets? - viz, little epics], ‘to betray the soul of that hemiplegia or paralysis which many consider a city’ (early July; Letters, I, p.55.; SL22); JAJ’s first story “The Sisters” - thought to be based on the death of a priest on his mother’s side - accepted by the Homestead editor H. F. Norman, 23 July, 1904 (publ. 13 Aug.), and uniquely signed “Stephen Daedalus”; contrib. poem [‘My love is in a light attire’ [poem 7 in Chamber Music] to Dana (Aug.) and uniquely seeks and receives cash payment from the editors [Eglinton and Ryan]; followed by “Eveline” (publ. 10 Sept. 1904) and “After the Race” (publ. 17 Dec. 1904; based on his interview with French motor ace Henri Fournier at the Gordon-Bennett race, Phoenix Park, pub. The Irish Times, 7 April 1903); JAJ undertakes book-reviewing as “Stephen Daedalus”, and later as “Dedalus”; writes and circulates among friends a verse-squib called “The Holy Office” [‘Katharsis-Purgative [...] Thus I relieve their timid arses / Perform my office of Katharsis’], which he submitted unsuccessfully to St. Stephen’s and later published privately in Trieste; briefly works as a teacher at Clifton School [Prep-school], Dalkey, founded by Francis Irwin, an Ulster Scot (Mr. Deasy in Ulysses) in the summer of 1904;

[ top ]

1904 (Aug.-Dec.): JAJ suspects Nora of copying from letter-writing book, 16 Aug. 1904; shares platform with McCormack and J. C. Doyle at RDS (Horse Show Week), singing “The Sally Gardens”, “The Croppy Boy” and “My Love was born in the North Countree”, winning a Bronze Medal, 27 Aug. 1904 - with Nora in the audience; writes letter to Nora professing his religious apostasy and confessing his ‘anguish and doubt’ regarding her response to him, 29 Aug., 1904; JAJ requested to leave by McKernans on closing up their house for holidays; stays with James & Margaret Cousins for 2 nights at the Bungalow, Dromard Terrace, Sandymount [nr. Strand Rd.; off Sandymount Green], and then with Maurice O’Callaghan (medical student), for one night, and with the Murrays at 103 North Strand for some nights more, before removing to Martello Tower, Sandycove, leased by Oliver St. John Gogarty from War Dept. (at £8 p.a.), and with Samuel Chenevix Trench [var. Dermot Chenevix Trench; aka ‘Diarmuid Trench’, who played the tramp in Hyde’s Casadh an tSugain], also in residence, 9-15 Sept. 1904; quits the Martello, after Gogarty fires a .22 rifle in the main chamber to quieten Trench who is dreaming of panthers, 15 Sept. [hence ‘panthersahib’ in Ulysses]; prob. joins drinking companions at Maternity Hosp., and proceeds to kips [Nightown/Monto] with Vincent Cosgrave and others; involved in a fracas there, circa 16 Sept.; asks James Starkey to effect removal of his possessions from Martello Tower in a trunk; advised by Byrne to ask Nora to travel abroad with him; enquires about Berlitz jobs from a Miss Gilford (Lincolnshire); sends Chamber Music to Grant Richards (London publisher) Oct. 8 1904; leaves Ireland with Nora from North Wall, accompanied to boat by br. [Stanislaus] and his father [JSJ] - the latter being oblivious to the intended elopment - though later notified by Tom Devin, also present, who spotted the couple together once on shipboard, 8 Oct. 1904; JAJ travels on the same night to London; fails to meet Symons in London during a two-hour period in which Nora is left waiting his return on a park bench; travels onwards to Paris, 9 Oct. 1904; borrows money from Curran, then visiting Paris; travels on to Zürich, 11 Oct. 1904, staying at Gasthaus Hoffnung (16 Reiterstrasse, adjac. Lagerstrasse)- ‘the first time I slept with you [Nora]’, acc. to a letter of 1909; writes part “Christmas Eve” [an abandoned story, later rewritten as “Clay”]; finds no Berlitz job awaiting him; sent on to Trieste by Herr Malcrida, arriving 12 October 1904; likewise finds no post there, and is redirected to the new school at Pola (now sp. Pula, Istrian Peninsula, Yugoslavia), ‘a naval Siberia’ by Almidano Artifoni (Berlitz dir. at Trieste); arrives at Pola, 20 Oct. 1904; settles at Via Giulia 2, II° piano [2nd floor], near the Berlitz school there; writes to Dublin asking for the key of his trunk, now sent on from Zürich, and also for his BA certificate; befriended by Allessandro Francini-Bruni (Artifoni’s assistant and acting Berlitz dir.) and his wife Clotilde (née Bruni; with whom Francini-Bruni had eloped); earns £2 p.w. for 16 hrs work, chiefly teaching naval officers; finishes Chap. XII of Stephen Hero by 31 Oct. 1904 [but said by him to have been finished in Zürich]; Eyers, an English colleague, remarks on Nora’s social inferiority to Joyce and is indignantly ejected; JAJ learns Tuscan Italian from Francini and embarks on a translation of Moore’s Celibates jointly with him; JAJ writes the aesthetic formulae based on Aquinas’s sententiae, in “Pola Notebook” [now known to be the same volume as the “Paris Notebook”], Nov. 1904 - notably omitting both Thomas’s tria requiruntur and his own coinage ‘epiphany’ when describing the “Act of Apprehension” in relation to the phases of ‘simple perception’, ‘recognition’, and ‘satisfaction’ [CW48]; Chaps. XII & XIII of Stephen Hero complete by 12 Dec. 1904; his poem ‘Thou leanest to the shell of night’ publ. in Venture [London] (Nov. 1904);

1905: working of chapter XV of Stephen Hero at New Year [incl. first extant portion]; sends Chaps. XII, XIII, XIV, XV dealing with college years to Stanislaus for sight of Cosgrave and Curran, and to be read to Aunt Josephine [wife of JAJ’s maternal uncle], 13 Jan. 1905; JAJ sends “Clay” to The Irish Homestead, Jan 1905, only to be rejected by the editor Norman; Joyces move in on an upper floor of Francini’s house at via Medolino 7 (now 1), 13 Jan. 1905 [var. 5 Jan.]; reads Strauss’s Vie de Jésu; contemplates reverting to the title A Portrait as fearing “Stephen Hero” might seem sardonic [acc. Ellmann], Feb. 1905; The Irish Homestead refuses “Clay” [Feb.]; aliens expelled by Austrians on discovery of Italian spy-ring; Joyce invited by Artifoni to return to Trieste, March 1905, there to remain till 1915; finds room at Piazza Ponterosso 3, but evicted by landlady after a month on discovering Nora’s pregnancy; moves to 31 via San Nicolò, next door to Scuola Berlitz; completes Chapter XVIII of Stephen Hero, March 1905; reaches Chapter XX by April, Chapter XXI by May, and Chapter XXIV by 7 June 1905; offers Chamber Music to John Lane, 1905; JAJ has 50 copies of “The Holy Office” printed in Trieste, 5 June 1905, for distribution in Dublin; rewrites “A Painful Case” (8 May 1905); tells Stanislaus that he will follow Dubliners with Provincials (letter of 12 July 1905; Sel. Letters, 63); writes “The Boarding House” (by 13 July 1905); writes “Counterparts” (by 16 July 1905); a son Giorgio, b. 27 July 1905 [later George; occas. Georgie; here Giorgio passim], being delivered by a pupil Dr. Sinigaglia; JAJ sends telegram to Dublin, ‘SON BORN JIM’; Nora takes in washing (and inscribes laundry list on verso of “A Painful Case”; Nora becomes increasingly tearful in her isolation (‘one of those plants which cannot be safely transplanted’); JAJ writes “Ivy Day in the Committee Room” (fair copy dated 29 Aug.); writes “Araby” (Oct. 1905) and “Grace” (Oct.-Dec. 1905); asks Stanislaus to come to Trieste ‘for a few days ... to speak on a very serious matter’, 8 July 1905 [Letters, II, 92] and later writes of plan to share rent of small cottage ‘outside Dublin in the suburbs’ contingent on the publication of Chamber Music, 12 July 1905 [Letters, II, 97]; Stanislaus leaves Dublin for Trieste, 15 Oct. 1905; JAJ plans to gain for Nora her share of her grandmother’s legacy; makes concerted effort to win puzzle contest in Ideas (London); takes singing lessons from Giuseppe Sinico, terminated as unpaid; sends 12 stories to Grant Richards, 3 Dec. 1905;

[ top ]

1906: Grant Richards agrees to publish Dubliners, 17 Feb. 1906, with the assent of his reader Filson Young [‘an order and symmetrical connection between the stories making them one book’; Magalaner & Kain]; JAJ moves to via Giovanni Boccaccio, sharing an apartment with the Francini Brunis, 24 Feb. 1906; composes “Two Gallants” and sends it to to Richards, 22 Feb.; writes “A Little Cloud”, and revises “A Painful Case” and “After the Race”; Richards’ printer blue-pencils word ‘bloody’ in “Two Gallants” and soon finds other objectionable passages in the stories; Joyce notified of objections by Richards, 23 April 1906; Richards offers to publish an autobiographical writing (Stephen Hero) first, and then the stories after; JAJ lays off Stephen Hero at Chap. XXV [recte XXVI]; JAJ’s correspondence with Richards during May-June 1906 take the form of a principled vindication of the realism and art of Dubliners and incls. his allusion to ‘the spiritual liberation of my country’ (20 May 1906); JAJ registers birth of Giorgio (‘legittimi’); moves to Rome to acquire teaching certificates, June 1906; receives news of Gogarty’s marriage (6 Aug. 1906); reads Wilde’s Picture of Dorian Gray (letter of 16 August 1906) - i.e., in Italian as Doriano Gray dipinto (Palermo 1906); offers an appraisal of Wilde’s novel in a letter to Stanislaus (19 Aug. 1906); writes that he has been ‘unnecessarily harsh’ about Dublin in letter to Stanislaus, (25 Sept. 1906); Richards finally rejects Dubliners collection, Sept. 1906, and confirms that rejection on 19 Oct. 1906; in the interim JAJ engages St. Lô Malet (internat. lawyer), who contacts Society of Authors, with blank results; JAJ informs Arthur Symons of Richards’ breach of contract; Symons recommends Chamber Music (“A Book of Thirty Songs for Lovers”) to Elkin Mathews for his Vigo Cabinet, 9 Oct. 1906; JAJ offers Chamber Music to Mathews and mentions his novel of which only two chapters remain to be written (Stephen Hero); Bertelli embezzles funds from Scuola Berlitz and Artifoni indicates that he cannot pay his English teachers in the summer; JAJ applies for a post as clerk-translator in international section of the Roman banking firm of Nast-Kolb and Schumacher; arrives in Rome with family via Ancona, 1 Aug. 1906, settling at via Frattina; wears out trousers and importunes Stanislaus for replacement funds in shape of advance from Artifoni; touches English consul in Rome for 50 lira; takes on private pupil (Terzini) and then finds part-time work at École des Langues, 20 Nov. 1906; compares Rome to a man who makes his living ‘by exhibiting his grandmother’s corpse’); plans a new story for Dubliners about Mr. Alfred Hunter to be called “Ulysses” (3 Dec. 1906), asking Stanislaus to write with details of Mr Hunter (Letter of 3 Dec. 1906); checks details of Infallibility at Vatican Council of 1870 at Biblioteca Vittorio Emanuele; suffers rise in rent with alternative notice to quit, 12 Nov. 1906; stalls on story about Mr. Hunter (‘I thought of beginning my story “Ulysses”: but I have too many cares at present’: 13 Nov. 1906); evicted 3 Dec.; takes 2 rooms on 5th fl., 51 via Monte Brianzo, 8 Dec. 1906 (the second added by Nora); JAJ takes hours at École des Langues and afterwards quits; unable to meet appeal for £1 from JSJ, Christmas 1906; Roman cabby accidentally catches Giorgio under eye with whip; [sojourn in Rome, July 1906-March 1907; “The Dead” presum. conceived in Rome and written in Trieste on return];

[ top ]

1907: admits that his story “Ulysses” which ‘never got any forrader than the title’ (6 Jan. 1907); contemplates writing other stories (“The Last Supper”, “The Street”, “Vengeance”, “At Bay” and “Catharsis”) which he ‘could write if circumstances were favourable’ (same letter of 6 Jan. 1907; Letters, II, p.209); Elkin Mathews agrees to publish Chamber Music clear of royalties on the first 300 copies and at 15% for Joyce thereafter, 7 Jan. 1907; leaves off writing Stephen Hero (‘Is there any point continuing it?’: Letter of 10 Jan. 1907); writes to JSJ assuring him of his continuing concern to help ‘now that I have gained some kind of position’, 9 Feb. 1907; ‘put off’ writing [“The Dead”?] by news of the Playboy riots in Dublin concerning Synge’s new play [26 Jan. 1907; letter to Stanislaus, 11 Feb. 1907] - which made him feel ‘like a man in a house who hears a row in the street ... but can’t get out to see what the hell is going on’: letter to SJ, 11 Feb. 1907 - also refers to “The Dead” by name as being interrupted by new of the Riot); continuing dispondency in Rome (‘[m]y mouth is full of decayed teeth and my soul of decayed ambitions’: letter to SJ, 20 Feb. 1907; Letters II, 216); Dubliners rejected by John Long of London, 21 Feb. 1907 [extant letter at Cornell UP]; JAJ bored by a performance of Wagner’s Götterdammerung [Dusk of the Gods], and left ‘quite cold’ by the annual procession in honour of Giordano Bruno [17 Feb. 1907]; expresses fears of ‘mental extinction’ in the same letter to Stanislaus ([1] March 1907); abruptly resigns from bank, Feb. 1907, with effect from 5 March; mugged in Rome when on a bender, losing a month’s pay of 200 crowns, though spared arrest through the Bloom-like intervention of passing acquaintances [JJ, 1965, p.251]; returns to Trieste with his family, 7 March 1907; boards with Francinis (though owing money); re-employed by Artifoni at a pittance in spite of earlier refusal; moves to flat at 1 via Santa Catarina; page-proofs of Chamber Music sent by Mathews and forwarded from Rome, late March; JAJ dissuaded from calling off publication of the poem-collection by Stanislaus; JAJ complains at misspelling of John O’Leary’s name in obituary [without the O’], in Piccolo della Sera, 1907; commissioned by Roberto Prezioso, editor of Piccolo (fnd. by Teodora Mayer), being a pupil and one of the models for Leopold, to write three articles on Ireland; the articles appear as “Il Fenianismo: L’Ultimo Feniano [Fenianism: The Last Fenian]” (22 March); continues with “Home Rule Maggiorenne [Home Rule Comes of Age]” (19 May), and “L’Irlanda all Sbarra [Ireland at the Bar]” (16 Sept.) - the last concerning the trial of Myles Joyce, an Irish-speaker charged in an agrarian killing and hanged with his co-defendants in Galway, 1882;

1907 [cont.]: Attilio Tamaro invites him to present three lectures at Università del Popolo (“Irlanda, Isola dei Santi et die Savi [Ireland, Island of Saints and Sages”] (27 April 1907) - actually delivered at the Sala della Borsa [Palazzo della Borsa] in Trieste; writes a lecture, “Giacomo Clarenzio Mangan [James Clarence Mangan]” (written in early May 1907, but undelivered); also “The Irish Literary Revival” [June; extant only as sentence frags.]; receives recriminatory letter from JSJ about ‘your miserable mistake’ (i.e., his elopement with Nora), 24 April [Letters, II, pp.221-23]; Chamber Music, containing 36 poems, published, May 1907 (only 200 copies actually sold by 1913); JAJ asks Corriere della Sera to appoint him as Dublin correspondent; applies unsuccessfully for post in South Africa Colonisation Society, early July; contracts rheumatic fever [and hospitalised]; Nora gives birth to a girl in Ospedale Civico (‘almost born on the street’, acc. to Nora, as related by Francini Bruni - now regarded as unreliable); child called Lucia Anna (b. 26 July 1907) - Lucy being the name Joyce had already decided on had Giorgio been a boy [Letters, II, p.95); child marked by strabismus from birth; JAJ receives application from Geoffrey Molyneux Palmer to set Chamber Music to music - and later expressed pleasure at the result in a letter of 1909; JAJ writes “The Dead” during convalescence from rheumatic fever [err. in hospital], and completes it circa 6 Sept.; tells Stanislaus that he would expand “Ulysses” into ‘short book’ (Diary of SJ, 10 Nov. 1907, cited in Richard Ellmann, James Joyce [1959] 1965 Edn., p.274); also tells Stanislaus of his plan to revise Stephen Hero as five long chapters, omitting the scenes of infancy (Letter of 8 Sept. 1907); borrows funds from Artifoni to bring Stanislaus to Trieste, arriving Oct. 1907; JAJ gives up teaching at the Berlitz school on Artifoni’s leasing it to employees (along with debts to Stanislaus); JAJ takes his pupils away private as clients, incl. [Aron] Ettore Schmitz (pseud. Italo Svevo; d. 1928); embarks on wholesale revision of Stephen Hero as A Portrait, ending Chap. 1 by 29 Nov. 1907 and Chap. 3 by 7 April 1908 - considering the name Daly instead of Dedalus [Stanislaus’s diary, 8 Sept. 1907; Ellmann, JJ, 1965 Edn. p.274; 1982 Edn. 264]; tells Stanislaus that Ulysses [now envisaged as a novel] would be a Dublin Peer Gynt, 10 Nov. 1907 - and later tells Harriet Shaw Weaver that he started Ulysses in Rome - an obvious reference to the abandoned story-version (Letter of 8 Nov. 1916); Elkin Mathews refuses an option on Dubliners, Nov. 1907, though passing it to Joseph Hone - chairman and co-founder of Maunsel & Co.; receives invitation from Gogarty at Vienna to travel to Greece and Venice with him, and to settle in Vienna, 1 Dec. 1907; refuses on advice of Stanislaus;

[ top ]

1908: communication with Gogarty ends with unsigned note from Gogarty of Jan. 1908; Maunsel & Co. show interest in Dubliners, Feb. 1908, but Joyce prefers to continue seeking a London publisher; Schmitz reads existing MS of A Portrait in Jan. 1908 and encourages Joyce to continue; JAJ sees Eleanora Duse on stage, Feb. 1908; also sees Ermete Zacconi in Ibsen’s Ghosts, and later in Turgenev’s Il Pane Altrui (JAJ crying out in the theatre, ‘Di questi artisti nessuno se ne sogna da noi [no one at home knows there are artists like this’]); criticises Hamlet for dramatic blunders in performance by Salvini, 8 Feb. 1908; JAJ’s drinking begins to effect his eyesight; row with Nora over drink; JAJ renounces drink, 12 Feb. 1908; receives [non-viewing] rejection from Hutchinson, and also from Alstons Rivers (Feb. 1908) and Edward Arnold (July 1908); trans. Synge’s Riders to the Sea with Nicolò Vidacovich, 6 March 1908f; announces plans to become agent for Irish tweed in Trieste, 28 June 1908; takes lessons from Romeo Bartoli and sings in concert quintet; Nora suffers miscarriage at three months, 4 Aug. 1908; JAJ finds himself the only one to regret the ‘truncated existence’; JAJ quarrel with Stanislaus in requiring him to delay repaying his creditors; Stanislaus moves out and settles at 27 via Nuova, Autumn 1908;

1909: JAJ finally moves to 8 via Vincenzo Scussa, March 1909; Stanislaus appt. Asst. Director at Berlitz School; JAJ finally sends Dubliners to George Roberts at Maunsel & Co., April 1909; writes on Oscar Wilde for Piccolo della Sera, 24 March 1909; receives permission from Robert Ross to translate Soul of Man Under Socialism (Wilde); receives financial cri de coeur from JSJ (‘I feel certain I have seen my last Xmas’); JAJ asks Stanislaus to take Giorgio to Ireland, but ultimately makes the trip himself, arriving 29 July (‘Where’s Stannie?’); claims to be visiting on Piccolo commission to review Shaw’s new play at the Abbey, securing a journalist’s ticket; meets reviewer Piaras Beaslaí and frequents Irish Freeman offices at his invitation - thus gleaning material for “Aoelus” in Ulysses; avoids Gogarty at the pier in Kingstown; joins family at 44 Fontenoy St.; JSJ plays aria from La Traviata (Act. 3) as token of reconciliation (‘Foolish old man ... Now I see the harm I did’); JAJ has chilly encounter with Gogarty, with varying accounts rendered by participants; JAJ shattered by conversation with Cosgrave, who claims to have shared Nora’s favours in 1904, 6 Aug. 1909; writes intemperately to Nora (‘is it all over between us?’, 44 Fontenoy St., 6 Aug. 1909); on the morrow visits 7 Eccles St., where Byrne is now living with his aunt [remaining during 1908-10, the house having been empty in 1904]; embarks of cloacal correspondence with Nora, encouraging her to write worse than his sexually explicit offerings (‘Dirty little Fuckbird [...] Write me more about that and yourself, sweetly, dirtier, dirtier’, 9 Dec. 1909); assured by Byrne that Cosgrave’s story is a fabrication originating in conspiracy with Gogarty (‘to break his spirit’); arranges for Eileen to receive singing lessons and plans to bring Eva to Trieste; Stanislaus charged for Dublin family expenses and obstructed by Artifoni; JAJ sees Shaw’s The Shewing-Up of Blanco Posnet, 25 Aug. 1909; reviews it adversely for Piccolo della Sera (8 Sept. 1909), calling Shaw ‘a born preacher’ incapable of ‘the noble and bare style appropriate to modern playwriting’;

[ top ]

1909 [cont.] prints himself cards as Piccolo correspondent and visits Evening Telegraph offices on the strength of them; introduced to staff by editor Patrick J. Mead [sub-ed. to Morris Cosgrave in 1904], Hugh MacNeill and others; likewise visits Freeman’s Journal, prop. Thomas Sexton; Thomas Kettle seeks lectureship for JAJ at National University; JAJ refuses offer of Italian evening classes in UCD for £100 p.a.; takes Giorgio to Galway, 26 Aug. 1909 and meets Mrs. Barnacle at Nora’s home, 4 Bowling Green; purchases for Nora a pendant of five dice and tablet inscribed ‘Love is unhapy when love is away’; received funds from Stanislaus; fails to get permission from literary estate of J. M. Synge to produce Riders to the Sea in Italian; signs contract for Dubliners with Joseph Hone of Maunsel and secures £300 advance on royalties from Roberts (ed. at Maunsel); pays for Eva’s tonsilectomy; gives Kettles a copy of Chamber Music as a wedding gift, 8 Sept. - but does not attend his wedding; revisits Byrne, who enters the kitchen door at Eccles St. through the front area as Bloom does in Ulysses; returns to Trieste with Giorgio and sis. Eva (aetat. 18), 13 Sept.; chance remark by Eva on the lack of cinema in Dublin inspires him to gain a commission from Triestino cinema-owners to establish a cinema in Dublin; departs for Dublin 18 Oct. (‘the day of my espousals and [...] the day of the gladness of my heart’ - letter to Stanislaus, Letters, II, 176), arriving 21 Oct., 1909; leases suitable building in Mary St., Dublin, 28 Oct.; instals visiting partners Machnich and Rebez in Finn’s Hotel, later settling above the premises in Mary St.; JAJ is shown Nora’s former room by manageress; visits Belfast with partners, 27 Nov.; travels to Cork, 12 Dec.; opens the Volta cinema in Mary St., 20 Dec. (“The First Paris Orphanage”, “La Pourponnière”, and “The Tragic Story of Beatrice Cenci”); Volta gains a permanent performance licence, 29 Dec.; JAJ explores poss. of importing tweed to Trieste for Irish Woollen Co.; sends MS copy of Chamber Music to Nora, with lyrical and erotic letters; wires emergency funds to Stanislaus and Nora, then facing eviction in Trieste, 1 Dec. 1909; his poems “Bid adieu to girlish days”, “Strings in the Earth and Air” and “What Counsel Hath the Hooded Moon”, included in Dublin Book of Irish Verse (1909), an anthology ed. John Cooke;

1910: JAJ returns to Trieste, bringing sis. Eileen, 2 Jan. 1910; a drinking bout on 10 Jan. results in arthritis in one arm and an atrophied deltoid muscle (as recorded in notes of Dr. Victor Morax in 1922, based on Joyce’s explanation of his chronic iritis); JAJ agrees to changes in Dubliners required by Roberts, 23 March 1910; Volta cinema sold at a 40% loss, July 1910; JAJ compiles the so-called “Alphabetical Notebook” [Cornell MS 25] to write A Portrait, Trieste, 1910; JAJ writes to Roberts with threat of ‘communicating the whole matter [...] in a circular letter to the Irish press’ and legal action, 10 July 1910; JAJ with family moves to 32 via Barriera Vecchia with Stanislaus’s help, Aug. 1910, Stanislaus remaining in a room at via Nuova but resuming evening meals with them; Roberts promises to send proofs of Dubliners, setting the date of publication at 20 Jan. following, Dec. 1910; JAJ writes “La Cometa dell’ Home Rule” (Piccolo9 della Sera, 22 Dec. 1910);

[ top ]

1911: JAJ threatens to leave Stanislaus and his sisters (‘the cattolicissime’) in Trieste, letter of 12 Jan. 1911; Roberts again writes renewing objections to altered passages in “Ivy Day”, 9 Feb. 1911; Eva returns to Dublin, 9 July 1911; JAJ purportedly throws part or all of the Stephen Hero MS in the fire in 1911, only to be rescued by Nora, acc. Samuel Beckett [var. The Portrait, rescued by Eileen, acc. Ellmann, JJ, 325 and see Spencer, et al., ed., Stephen Hero, 1977, ‘Publisher’s Note’]; JAJ writes to George V, 1 Aug., inquiring if the allusion in “Ivy Day [... &c.]” story was ‘offensive to the memory of his father’, as deemed by Maunsel’s printer [Falconer] and receives non-committal and dismissive reply from the King’s secretary, 11 Aug.; JAJ writes open letter to Roberts, defending the contested Edward VII passage in Dubliners, 9 Aug.; the letter printed in Sinn Fein (2 Sept. 1911) & abbrev. in Northern Whig (26 Aug. 1911), later reprinted as “A Curious History” in Egoist (Jan. 1915; rep. in Selected Letters, p.199); JAJ encourages Nicolò Vidacovich’s plan to produce Italian version of W. B Yeats’s Countess Cathleen; encourages Nora to accept attentions from Prezioso, which she checks; JAJ reduces Prezioso to tears in confrontation (observed by Tullio Silvestri) at Piazza Dante, 1911;

Note on burning of the Stephen Hero MS: variously placed at 1911 - as here - and at 1908, a year after the resumption of writing in 1907 [as noted above]. (See

1912: Joyces threatened with eviction by landlord Picciola, mid-Feb. 1912; JAJ gives new series of lectures at Università del Popolo (“Verismo ed idealismo nella letterature inglese: Daniel De Foe & William Blake”), March 1912; travels to Padua to sit exams as English teacher, 24-26 April 1912, with oral exams on 30 April (scoring 421 out of 450); plan blocked [revoked] since his Irish university degree was not acceptible [var. failed by Italian woman-examiner, acc. Frank Budgen (“James Joyce”, 1941); contribs. “L’Ombra di Parnell [The Shade of Parnell]” tp Il Piccolo della Sera (16 May, 1912); Nora travels to Dublin, with Lucia, on mission to persuade George Roberts (of Maunsel), arriving Westland Row, 8 July 1912; stayed at Finn’s Hotel; visits Roberts with JSJ and Charlie Joyce [youngest br.] but is rebuffed; travels onwards to Galway to visit her uncle Michael Healy; Joyce and Giorgio arrive in Dublin, via London, 14-15 July 1912; JAJ visits Yeats at Woburn Buildings and fails to get permission for Italian the translation of his Countess Cathleen, Yeats insisting on the use of the new version; visits Hone at Maunsel (‘I have crossed Europe to see you’) and sent on to Roberts; Roberts proposes deletion of disputed passages, with explanatory preface, or publication under author’s own name; encounters James Stephens in Dawson St., Dublin, and drinks with him in Pat Kinsella’s [pub]; travels to Galway and visits the fictional grave of Michael Furey at Oughterard [in “The Dead”] and the real grave of Michael “Sonny” Bodkin at Rahoon, c.14 Aug.; JAJ contribs. two articles on Aran Islands to Piccolo, evincing new interest in Irish life and folklore; returns to Dublin, 17 August, settling at the Murrays while Nora and children remain on in Galway (later joining him); forwards letter from Henry Blackwood Price (Asst. Mgr. of Eastern Telegraph Co. in Trieste [branch]), about in foot & mouth serum plans pioneered in Austria, to Wm. Field (MP and Pres. of Irish Cattle Traders’ Assoc.); later writes sub-editorial on the subject for Freeman’s Journal (in Sept. 1912); fails to get Charlie a post as tenor at Sandymount Church; rejects demand frm Roberts that he deposit a bond of £1,000; JAJ brings Padraic Colum to Roberts’s office; faces demands from Roberts for changes to Dubliners amounting to omission of some stories, 18 August 1912; JAJ enlists solicitor [prob. George Lidwell, a friend of JSJ], to write a legal account of Dubliners and receives supportive comment on “Ivy Day” but adverse comment on “An Encounter” (‘magistrates are directed to hear such cases in private’), subsequently moderated, but not addressed to Roberts and therefore ineffective; Roberts demands securities of £1,000; on reflection in back room, JAJ agrees to omit “An Encounter”; JAJ seeks opinion of Kettle, who gravely disparages the collection (‘I’ll slate that book!’);

[ top ]

1912 [cont.]: Charles Weekes, Robert’s solicitor in London, advises him that the inclusion of real premises by name is dangerous from libel standpoint; Roberts consults Chas. Weekes in London and Collins in Dublin; writes to Joyce, asking for two sureties of £500; Stanislaus had cabled ‘Come without delay’, 15 Aug.; JAJ pawns watch and chain to stay on in Dublin; Roberts demands changes in “Grace”, “Ivy Day”, “The Boarding House” and every proper name in Dubliners, 30 Aug. 1912; Stanislaus rents flat for Joyces under immediate threat of eviction, 1 Sept. 1912 [Ellmann err. 1 Oct.]; Roberts offers to sell the printed galley sheets for £30, and JAJ accepts on 10 day bill, planning to publish at his own press to be located at 2 Jervis St., assisted by his br. Charlie (viz., The Liffey Press), 5 Sept.; JAJ secures one set of the Dubliners sheets from Roberts (‘obtained by a ruse’, acc. Letters, Vol. II, p.320); the printer Falconer refuses to part with galleys, 10 Sept. and destroys 1,000 copies on the morrow [so-called Maunsel Edn. of 1910]; Joyce leaves Dublin with family, evening of 11 Sept. 1912; stopping in London, he unsuccessfully offers Dubliners to English Review and Mills & Boon; composes “Gas from a Burner” in waiting-room at Flushing Station [Vlissingen], Holland, travelling back to Trieste, 12 Sept. - polishing it en route to Salzburg, 14 Sept., printing it on his arrival in Trieste; settling in new flat at 5 Via Donato Bramante, 15 Sept. 1912; appt. teacher at the Scuola Superiore di Commercio Revoltella [Trieste Commercial High School; var. Scuola Revoltella Superiori de Commercio], teaching 6 hours a week for good pay; takes on private students in the afternoons incl. Paolo Cuzzi, Triestino lawyer and his 14-year-old sister Emma with two friends; embarks on 10 Monday-night talks on “Amleto di G. [sic for W] Shakespeare”, at the Società di Minerva on Via Carducci (See under Shakespeare > - infra) [formerly recorded here as Università Popolare [or del Popolo], Trieste, 5 Nov. 1912 - 11 Feb. 1913 with var. 4 Nov. 1912 - 10 Feb. 1913]; JAJ described in Il Piccolo della Sera as ‘a thinker, man of letters, and occasional journalist’; JAJ has family ports. restored by Daniel Egan, Ormond Quay, 1912; Dubliners turned down by Martin Secker (London), late 1912;

1913: Dubliners rejected by Elkin Mathews for the second second time, 1 April 1913; JAJ receives shipment of family portraits, given by his father, restored and shipped at JAJ’s expense, spring 1913, to adorn flat at via 5 via Donato Bramante; also acquired from his father the hunting waistcoat which he often wore when teaching Emma Cuzzi and friends; during July or August 1914, JAJ writes Giacomo Joyce, arising from notes in the form of prose-poems or epiphanies based on his mild affair (‘of eyes rather than of bodies’, acc. Ellmann) with Signorina Amalia Popper, a pupil during Jan. 1911-mid 1914; her father Leopoldo Popper, a Triestino businessman, remarks to him, ‘Mia figlia ha una grandissima ammirazione per il suo maestro inglese’: Ellmann, JJ]; ultimately published as Giacomo from eight large sheets kept by Stanislaus (1968); receives letter from Grant Richards seeking view of Dubliners again, 25 Nov. 1913; JAJ receives an unsolicited letter from Ezra Pound, then in London (having been notified of Joyce by Yeats), 15 Dec. 1913 [see note]; soon afterwards, Yeats sends to Pound Joyce’s poem, “I hear an army charging upon the land” which Pound prints in Des Imagistes (1914), anthology; Exiles commenced Nov. 1913 (in ‘three cat and mouse acts’ - Ellmann, JJ, 172);

[ top ]

1914: Stanislaus is arrested as an outspoken irredentist, 9 Jan. 1914, and interned [at Katzenau, nr. Linz] until 1918; JAJ makes final revisions to first chap. of of A Portrait and sends it, with the Dubliners stories, to Pound, mid-Jan. 1914 (enthusiastic reply dated 19 Jan. 1914); Tullio Silvestri paints Nora, 1914; “Watching the Needle Boats at San Sabba”, a poem by Joyce publ. in Saturday Review, 20 Sept. 1913; Pound prints “A Curious History” composed by JAJ 30 Nov. 1913 and containing JAJ’s Sinn Fein letter of 1911, in The Egoist (15 Jan. 1914); Richards agrees to publish Dubliners, 29 January (in response to Joyce’s renewed demand for a decision of 14 Jan. 1914); agreement signed March 1914, JAJ to take first 120 copies without royalties for first 500, and a commitment to Richards for the publication of his subsequent work [A Portrait]; Richards brings out Dubliners using page-proofs from guillotined Dublin edition [not the last that Maunsel had printed] as copy; proofs reach Joyce, April 1914; publication on 15 June 1914 (1,250 copies); A Portrait serialised in The Egoist, ed. Dora Marsden with Harriet Shaw Weaver (in charge from June 1914, using a different printer), 2 Feb. 1914-1 Aug. 1914, after which a hiatus concluding with asterisks for a passage that offended the printer (viz., ‘... Fresh Nelly is waiting on you’); Joyce delays finishing Portrait, instalments to Pound, resuming in Nov. 1914 - being mailed from intermediary address of Otto Schmitz’s f.-in-law in Murano; JAJ commences work on Ulysses 1 March 1914 (St. David’s Day) - using the translation by Samuel H. Butcher and Andrew Lang as his text (Odyssey Of Homer Done into English Prose 1879); Tullio Silvestri paints Joyce, 1914; “A Boarding House” and “A Little Cloud” publ. in H. L. Mencken’s Smart Set (May 1914) on recommendation of B. W. Huebsch, publisher; JAJ contacts Huebsch, who professes no intention of publishing; JAJ appt. English correspondent to Gioachino Venezinani paint factory, Jan. 1914 at 100 crowns p.m.; Austria declares war on Serbia, 28 July 1914; Britain and Austrio-Hungarian Empire [Germany] at war, August 1914; no action taken against Joyces; Joyce submits his articles on Ireland (formerly in Piccolo della Sera) for book publication to Genovese publisher Angelo Formiggini as “Ireland at the Bar”, and is rejected; Dubliners finally published by Grant Richards in June 1914;

1915: JAJ receives letter from J. B. Pinker, agent of J. G. Wells, offering to act for him, 10 Feb. 1915; Eileen m. Frantisek Schaurek, Prokurist [cashier] at Zivnostenska Banka, 12 April 1915, later moving to Prague; Exiles completed April 1915; Grant Richards writes in response to requested reviews, ‘Neither the Freeman’s Journal nor Sinn Fein has reviewed your book. (Letter, 14 April (and 26 April 1915); GR, 157; Jeri Johnson, Dubliners, OUP 2000, p.ix) Richards decides not to publish A Portrait, 18 May 1915 for want of wartime audience; Italians declare war, May 1915; Austrians begin partial evacuation of Trieste; JAJ writes postcard in German to Stanislaus, then in internment, announcing that he has finished the first episode of Ulysses, dated 16 June 1915; JAJ gains visa from America Consulate acting on part of UK, and permitted to leave Austria by train on condition of remaining non-combatant through intercession of Baron Ralli and Count Sordina; arrives with family at Zurich, 30 June 1915, having largely left behind possessions but with first-written episode of Ulysses (“Calypso”), being completed up to ‘kidneys of wheat’ (acc. Gorman); the Joyces stay at first in Gasthaus Hoffnung (as in 1904), moving after two weeks to 7 Reinhardstrasse; JAJ receives £15 from Michael Healy, 29 June 1915 (plus £9 more in Nov. 1915); receives £75 in three quarterly instalments from Royal Literary Fund, on the recommendation and insistence of Yeats and Pound, acting through Edmund Gosse, July 1915; A Portrait rejected by Martin Secker, July 1915; Joyce sends final episode of A Portrait to Pound, July/Aug., 1915; Pound forwards it directly to the Egoist, where it appears in edition for 1 Sept 1915; Pound then reads it in print - sending JAJ an enthusiastic response (‘I have just read the splendid end [...] and if I try to tell you how fine it is, I shall only break out into inane hyperbole’, Letter of 6 & 12 Sept.; Forrest, Pound/Joyce, p.44); the Joyces move to 10 Kreuzstrase, 15 Oct. 1915; Miss Weaver [HSW] offers to publish A Portrait if no other publisher can be found, 30 Nov. 1915; JAJ reads Victor Bérard’s Les Phéniciens et “l’Odyssée” (1902) at Zentralbibliothek in Zürich;

[ top ]

1916: A Portrait rejected by Duckworth’s reader Edward Garnett, Jan. 1916; JAJ receives £50 from HSW as payment for serialisation rights to ‘your wonderful book’, 14 Jan. 1916; family moves to 54 Seefeldstrasse, March 1916; JAJ receives £100 from Civil Pension List, August 1916; also receives support of £2 weekly from Society of Authors at Pound’s instigation; attends opera and concerts with Ottocaro Weiss, a friend of Otto Schwarz; employed by Prof. Siegmund Feilbogen on bilingual International Review, late 1915; participates in social life of Club des Étrangers and frequents Restaurant zum Roten Kreuz and Café Terrasse; seven printers turn down A Portrait in wake of Rainbow action against Lawrence’s publisher, to 25 March 1916; JAJ secures accounts of Richards’s sales of Dubliners (499 copies in 1914) through Pinker; Exiles rejected by The Stage Society, 11 July 1916; Joyce reports to HSW that Exiles cannot find a publisher, 1 July 1916, and receives from her news of agreement to publish A Portrait with B[enjamin] W. Huebsch, 19 July 1916; Portrait published by Ben Huebsch in New York, 29 Dec. 1916 [var. 30 Dec.]; JAJ engages with Jules Martin in film-company plans to fleece wealthy women;

1917: HSW, having failed to find a willing printer, using Huebsch’s sheets and publishes A Portrait in 750 copies, 12 Jan. 1917; otherwise enthusiastic review of A Portrait by H. G. Wells for Nation (24 Feb. 1917) suggests that Joyce shares a cloacal obsession with Swift; JAJ suffers attacks of glaucoma, Feb.-March 1917; receives £50 quarterly from ‘anon. admirer’ (HSW) through solicitor Slack Munro Saw & Co., purporting to find his address in Who’s Who, 22 Feb. 1917 (actually HSW); JAJ discovers his benefactor to be female from the pronoun “she” in answer to his letter to the solicitor; John Quinn purchases MS of Exiles, March 1917, and later buys corrected proofs of A Portrait for £20; Society requests to see Exiles again, 1 April 1917, and withdrawn by Pinker 2 July 1917; moves to 73 Seefeldstrasse, former flat of his friend Paul Ruggiero’s father; suffers attacks of glaucoma and synechia, 18 Aug., 1917; Ernst Siedler performs iridectomy on his right eye, at Augenklinik, 24 Aug. 1917; has nervous collapse in convalescence; travels with family to Locarno on medical advice, staying first at Villa Rosa and chiefly at Pension Daheim, 12 Oct. 1917; Martin arrested for embezzlement and afterwards revealed as Juda de Vries, son of distinguished gynecological, in a letter of thanks from his father; JAJ sends first three chaps. of Ulysses (“Telemachiad”, now completed, to Claud Sykes, an American friend in Zürich for typing (1st & 2nd on 20 Nov. & 20 Dec.; 3rd in late Dec. 1917);


[ back ] [ top ] [ next ]