Following the events of one single day in Dublin, the 16th of June 1904, and what happens to the characters Stephen Dedalus, Leopold Bloom and his wife Molly, Ulysses is a monument to the human condition. It has survived censorship, controversy and legal action, and even been deemed blasphemous, but remains an undisputed modernist classic: ceaselessly inventive, garrulous, funny, sorrowful, vulgar, lyrical and ultimately redemptive. It confirms Joyce’s belief that literature ‘is the eternal affirmation of the spirit of man’.

The authoritative Hans Walter Gabler text; With a new introduction by Anne Enright

Set entirely on one day, 16 June 1904, Ulysses follows Leopold Bloom and Stephen Daedalus as they go about their daily business in Dublin. From this starting point, James Joyce constructs a novel of extraordinary imaginative richness and depth. Unique in the history of literature, Ulysses is one of the most important and enjoyable works of the twentieth century.

This gorgeously illustrated picturebook brings back the delightful children’s story written by Ireland’s greatest writer, author of the Modernist masterpiece Ulysses,  James Joyce.

Originally written for Joyce’s grandson, Stephen,  the story has long been out of print in English due to uncertainty surrounding its copyright status. A recent change in copyright law emboldens Little Island to bring out a new edition.

On 10 August 1936, James Joyce wrote a letter to his grandson Stephen. In the letter he told, in simple language, the story of how the Devil built a bridge across the river at the town of  Beaugency. As usual, the Devil wanted a high price for his gift. But the clever mayor of the town outwitted the Devil by making use of the Devil’s fondness for cats.

This was an old French story but Joyce gave the mayor the name of a famous mayor of his own home town of Dublin in Ireland: the popular politician and character, Alfie Byrne.

Following the events of one single day in Dublin, the 16th June 1904, and what happens to the characters Stephen Dedalus, Leopold Bloom and his wife Molly, Ulysses is a monument to the human condition. It has survived censorship, controversy and legal action, and even been deemed blasphemous, but remains an undisputed modernist classic: ceaselessly inventive, garrulous, funny, sorrowful, vulgar, lyrical and ultimately redemptive. It confirms Joyce’s belief that literature ‘is the eternal affirmation of the spirit of man’.

‘The most important expression which the present age has found; it is a book to which we are all indebted, and from which none of us can escape’ T. S. Eliot

‘Intoxicating … a towering work, in its word play surpassing even Shakespeare’ Guardian

The portrayal of Stephen Dedalus’s Dublin childhood and youth, his quest for identity through art and his gradual emancipation from the claims of family, religion and Ireland itself, is also an oblique self-portrait of the young James Joyce and a universal testament to the artist’s ‘eternal imagination’. Both an insight into Joyce’s life and childhood, and a unique work of modernist fiction, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a novel of sexual awakening, religious rebellion and the essential search for voice and meaning that every nascent artist must face in order to fully come into themselves.

James Joyce (1882-1941), the eldest of ten children, was born in Dublin, but exiled himself to Paris at twenty as a rebellion against his upbringing. He only returned to Ireland briefly from the continent but Dublin was at heart of his greatest works, Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. He lived in poverty until the last ten years of his life and was plagued by near blindness and the grief of his daughter’s mental illness.

If you enjoyed A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, you might like Joyce’s Dubliners, also available in Penguin Modern Classics.

‘There is nothing more vivid or beautiful in all Joyce’s writing. It has the searing clarity of truth … but is rich with myth and symbol’
Sunday Times

‘James Joyce was and remains almost unique among novelists in that he published nothing but masterpieces’
The Times Literary Supplement

Joyce’s first major work, written when he was only twenty-five, brought his city to the world for the first time. His stories are rooted in the rich detail of Dublin life, portraying ordinary, often defeated lives with unflinching realism. From ‘The Sisters’, a vivid portrait of childhood faith and guilt, to ‘Araby’, a timeless evocation of the inexplicable yearnings of adolescence, to ‘The Dead’, in which Gabriel Conroy is gradually brought to a painful epiphany regarding the nature of his existence, Joyce draws a realistic and memorable cast of Dubliners together in an powerful exploration of overarching themes. Writing of social decline, sexual desire and exploitation, corruption and personal failure, he creates a brilliantly compelling, unique vision of the world and of human experience.

James Joyce (1882-1941), the eldest of ten children, was born in Dublin, but exiled himself to Paris at twenty as a rebellion against his upbringing. He only returned to Ireland briefly from the continent but Dublin was at heart of his greatest works, Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. He lived in poverty until the last ten years of his life and was plagued by near blindness and the grief of his daughter’s mental illness.

If you enjoyed Dubliners, you might like Joyce’s Ulysses, also available in Penguin Modern Classics.

‘Joyce redeems his Dubliners, assures their identity, and makes their social existence appear permanent and immortal, like the streets they walk’
Tom Paulin

‘Joyce’s early short stories remain undimmed in their brilliance’
Sunday Times